FDLR's response to the article "Congo’s Militias Lure Former Rebels From Burundi"
By Callixte Mbarushimana
Executive Secretary of the FDLR
Paris, August 27, 2009
The FDLR refute the false information published by journalists KRON JOSH and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN in “The New York Times” on August 21, 2009 that the FDLR are a movement "of Hutuism", recruit Burundians in their army and exploit the wealth of the DRC.
The Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda ( FDLR ) categorically deny the false and outrageous content of the article entitled "Congo's Militias Lure Former Rebels from Burundi", published by JOSH KRON and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN in the newspaper “The New York Times“ of August 21, 2009 that the FDLR would be a movement "of Hutuism" that would recruit Burundians in its army and exploit the wealth of the DRC like gold and diamonds mines that it would use to pay its recruits.
The FDLR inform the public and the media that they are a movement open to all Rwandan women and men who want to be its members regardless of their ethnic, religious or regional background.
The FDLR have never and will never have a program of recruiting foreigners to join their armed forces "Abacunguzi" because they are currently in sufficient numbers to meet the challenges that the FDLR could be faced with in achieving their objective which is and remains the liberation of the Rwandan people from the yoke of the fascism of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF-Inkotanyi) .
The lies spread by these two journalists of The New York Times that the FDLR would exploit gold and diamond mines and pay $ 500 for each new recruit are shameful, groundless and unacceptable.
The FDLR remind everyone, including these merchants of lies of another age, that Abacunguzi fighters are united only by the ideal of freeing the people, of Rwanda of all ethnicities, from the yoke of a clique of criminals organized in the RPF-Inkotanyi currently in power in Kigali and helped by international lobbies. No Umucunguzi is paid for his/her mission and no Umucunguzi is and will ever be engaged in the exploitation of wealth of the DRC or of any other foreign country.
The FDLR remind the public and the media that there are many ill-intentioned individuals, some working for the Kigali regime and its international lobby, who spread lies in order to show that the FDLR would be the source of insecurity in the African Great Lakes Region and thereby legitimize the unjust and unnecessary ongoing war that warmongers and their international criminal lobbies have again imposed on peace-loving peoples of the African Great Lakes Region in order to maintain a permanent chaos and become masters of the enormous wealth of this area.
The FDLR warn the public and the media of the stories fabricated by some politicians, some international institutions authorities, journalists and other individuals in order to tarnish the reputation of the FDLR when pressure on the criminal Kigali regime to accept unconditional direct talks with the FDLR is becoming increasingly untenable for that regime.
The FDLR remain convinced that only the truth and not falsehood can free man, and reiterate their call made to journalists and politicians to stop spreading hatred and lies but to work to bring out the truth about the Rwandan tragedy that is the source of insecurity and perennial hegemonic wars that continue to afflict the African Great Lakes Region, and that since 1 October 1990.
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Congo’s Militias Lure Former Rebels From Burundi
Congo’s Militias Lure Former Rebels From Burundi
By JOSH KRON and JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
The New York Times
August 20, 2009
LUBERIZI, Congo — For Takwita Mungu, like many leftover soldiers from Burundi’s recently ended civil war, it all began with a phone call.
After seven years of bush fighting, and then giving up his gun under a new disarmament program for Burundian rebels, Private Mungu was unemployed, broke and restless. But the militia recruiter on the other end of the phone offered a glittering promise: diamonds, gold and a job fighting for the last bastion of militant Hutuism, in Congo.
“I knew right away,” said Private Mungu, 28, who had agreed to demobilize this past April but said he received neither compensation nor a job, only a shove back into the wilds of civilian life.
According to United Nations and Burundian military officials, Private Mungu is just one of hundreds of former Burundian rebel soldiers who are blazing an illicit trail across rivers and borders to fight for their brethren here in eastern Congo, worsening an already devastating conflict.
The men are joining the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, or F.D.L.R., an ethnic Hutu militia based in Congo that is considered one of Africa’s most venomous rebel movements. It was also the target of the recent, joint Congo-Rwanda military offensive intended to finally bring peace to this war-racked region.
For decades, the same ethnic tensions that plunged Rwanda into genocide in 1994 have brought violence to Burundi. The country, whose demographics, economy and history mirror those of Rwanda, has been a relatively forgotten piece of the Hutu-Tutsi saga that has plagued Africa’s Great Lakes Region.
Just as the violence in Rwanda spread beyond its borders, the fighting in Burundi has spilled over into Congo, where militants and their extremist ideologies prey on villages and the minerals beneath them. While a recent peace deal in Burundi has officially ended years of rebellion and bloodshed there, it has disenfranchised many former fighters.
The way Private Mungu describes it, he was a pawn in a veteran Hutu resistance movement, which fought its way to a power-sharing agreement in Burundi in December that granted its members cabinet posts and a slice of the country’s security apparatus.
But most of the jobs went to the top rebel officers, leaving more than 10,000 — from soldiers to schoolteachers — out in the cold. The most fortunate of these received less than $100 in disarmament packages; many, like Private Mungu, say they got nothing. Some have been hired to bolster shaky political parties, and according to a June report by Human Rights Watch, several former fighters have died doing it. Congo has been another option.
Each month, about 40 new Burundian recruits arrive in Luberizi, a sleepy, palm-strewn town just across the Burundi border in Congo, said Safari Ndabachekure, the local F.D.L.R. recruiter.
Many of the Burundian rebels live under the nose of a Congolese Army base nearby. While the two sides are formally at war, politics seem to disappear in Luberizi. Government officials and militia members live side by side in poverty, passing and greeting one another when they are not in the mountains, where the bulk of fighting goes on.
Congo’s laxity with the F.D.L.R. has led Rwanda to invade twice since the mid-1990s. But in January, Congo-Rwanda relations appeared to suddenly flip from enemies to partners, as the two countries agreed to work together to wipe out the Hutu militiamen along the border. But despite the official position of Congo’s government, human rights groups say that Congolese soldiers are still supporting Hutu militiamen, who come from different nations.
Burundian militiamen have been swept into Congo’s battles before. According to United Nations agencies and human rights groups, Burundians were being lured by similar means to Laurent Nkunda, a renegade Tutsi general who wreaked havoc in eastern Congo until he was seized in January. Before that, Burundians fought for another Congolese militia, the Mai Mai. As Burundi’s war has wound down, many of the former rebel soldiers have been willing to kill for whoever pays them, regardless of ethnic allegiances.
“In Burundi, the good life is only for the big person,” said Mr. Safari, the recruiter, who arrived in Congo two years ago. Now he helps orchestrate a circuit through which new arrivals receive temporary shelter, financial assistance and a free weapon.
“The first purpose is to promote the Hutu persons,” he said. “The second is to look for money.”
The United Nations peacekeeping mission in Congo has called the rebel migrations a destabilizing factor, and it said it was Burundian fighters who raided a prison in eastern Congo in April, freeing 220 rebels.
The flow of Burundian fighters into Congo is “definitely a concern,” said Lt. Col. Jean-Paul Dietrich, a spokesman for the United Nations peacekeeping mission, though he said it was limited to a small portion of Burundi’s former combatants.
Several former Burundian soldiers said Congo was a last resort; they do not have a burning desire to return to the bush.
“We are tired of fighting,” said Jean-Pierre Habiyaremye, 28, a former Burundian rebel who has resisted the offers to fight in Congo. “We want to form associations and build with our hands.”
But for his disarmament package, he said he was given $41 and a frying pan, while the Hutu rebels in Congo dangle promises of up to $500 cash. “With money like that,” he said, “it’s easy for them to find people.”
Note:
Josh Kron reported from Luberizi, Congo, and Jeffrey Gettleman from Nairobi, Kenya.
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FDLR's response to the article "Congo’s Militias Lure Former Rebels From Burundi"
Rwanda: Kigali to spend $10.9m on 2010 presidential elections
By KEZIO-MUSOKE DAVID
The East African
August 31, 2009
About 57.7 per cent of the Rwandan population is expected to cast a vote in the country’s September 2010 presidential election, according to the Kigali-based National Electoral Commission.
A report prepared by Charles Munyaneza, the NEC executive secretary shows that the commission is currently updating the now electronic voters’ register “in almost all villages,” and which this time round shall bear individual voters’ pictures.”
The report also says that the 2010 election will cost the government at least $10.9 million, thrice the amount spent in the 2003 presidential election.
The figure of 57.7 per cent cited by the NEC report represents an increase of two million voters compared with the election held in 2003. Officials have explained that the increase is mainly due to an increasing number of youths attaining the voting age.
“There were 3.9 million voters in 2003 and the registered voters for the 2008 parliamentary elections were 4.7 million while the turn up was 98 per cent. We expect to have about 5.2 million voters for the 2010 elections,” said Mr Munyaneza.
The number of polling stations according to Mr Munyaneza is also expected to increase to 16,000 from the 15,378 used in the 2008 parliamentary elections.
One seeming controversial development is that Rwanda is expecting to print most of the election-related material such as ballot papers and voter cards in Kigali, something that is bound to raise concern among human rights groups and electoral observers including the European Union.
Electoral officials say that the electoral body has installed a modern printer at the NEC offices to cater for printing requirements including ballot papers, voter cards, civic and voter education materials and other election-related paperwork previously printed by private printers in and outside the country.
The EU Election Observation Mission has in the past been the most critical of Rwanda’s elections, saying the legislation in the 2008 parliamentary elections had shortcomings in relation to key international standards, leading to insufficient safeguards for transparent elections.
The country has been criticised for holding elections allegedly without a “meaningful opposition.”
During the 2008 parliamentary elections, the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front in a coalition with six small parties was only challenged by one independent candidate; the Social Democratic Party and the Liberal Party.
The Liberal Party is aligned to Youth Minister Protais Mitali and the Social Democratic Party is headed by the Senate President Dr Vincent Biruta.
In the 2003 presidential elections — the first elections held since the 1994 genocide — President Kagame was challenged by Faustin Twagiramungu and Jean-Nepomuscene Nayinzira who managed to garner at least 3.6 per cent and 1.3 per cent respectively of the electoral vote.
The other party PS-Imberakuri Party which was founded by lawyer Bernard Ntaganda was also recently approved by Cabinet. Just barely a week after it was permitted to operate, it announced it will be fielding a candidate in next year’s presidential election.
Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, the chairperson of the radical Brussels-based opposition movement United Democratic Forces has also expressed her intention to stand for the elections.
Umuhoza could actually be barred by the new draft electoral law which states that all individuals intending to contest for the presidency will have to be residents in the country at the time and possess a national ID.
They will also be required to posses a “clean” legal background and strictly have one nationality (Rwandan) or relinquish their other nationalities.
The draft which is currently undergoing a “cleaning process” and yet to be approved by the two chambers of parliament also states that those intending to stand must also hold a birth certificate issued at least three months before the election by a competent government authority.
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Rwanda 2010: Another Kenya? Another Zimbabwe?
U.S. intensifies its military involvement in Africa through Africa Command (AFRICOM)
By Rick Rozoff
Media Monitor Networks
August 25, 2009)
"The size and location of the continent along with its human and natural resources - oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds, uranium, cobalt, chromium, platinum, timber, cotton, food products - make it an increasingly important part of a world that is daily becoming more integrated and interdependent."
The 2009 World Population Data Sheet published by the Washington, DC-based Population Reference Bureau states that the population of the African continent has surpassed one billion. Africans now account for over a seventh of the human race.
Africa's 53 nations are 28% of the 192 countries in the world.
The size and location of the continent along with its human and natural resources - oil, natural gas, gold, diamonds, uranium, cobalt, chromium, platinum, timber, cotton, food products - make it an increasingly important part of a world that is daily becoming more integrated and interdependent.
Africa is also the last continent to free itself from colonial domination. South America broke free of Spanish and Portuguese control in the beginning of the 1800s (leaving only the three Guianas - British, Dutch and French - still colonized) and the post-World War II decolonization of Asia that started with former British East India in 1947 was almost complete by the late 1950s.
Sub-Saharan Africa was not to liberate most of its territory from Belgian, British, French, Spanish and Portuguese colonial masters until the 1960s and 1970s. And the former owners were reluctant to cede newly created African nations any more than nominal independence and the ability to choose their own internal socio-economic orientation and foreign policy alignment.
In the two decades of the African independence struggle the continent was marred by Western-backed coups d'etat and assassinations of liberation leaders which included those against Patrice Lumumba in the former Belgian Congo in 1961, Ben Barka in Morocco in 1965, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana in 1966, Eduardo Mondlane in Mozambique in 1969, Amilcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau in 1973 and Marien Ngouabi in the Republic of the Congo (Brazzaville) in 1977.
In his latest Anti-Empire Report veteran political analyst William Blum wrote, "the next time you hear that Africa can't produce good leaders, people who are committed to the welfare of the masses of their people, think of Nkrumah and his fate. And think of Patrice Lumumba, overthrown in the Congo 1960-61 with the help of the United States; Agostinho Neto of Angola, against whom Washington waged war in the 1970s, making it impossible for him to institute progressive changes; Samora Machel of Mozambique against whom the CIA supported a counter-revolution in the 1970s-80s period; and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (now married to Machel's widow), who spent 28 years in prison thanks to the CIA." [1]
Some of Blum's references are to a series of proxy wars supported by the United States and its NATO allies and in some instances apartheid South Africa and the Mobutu Sese Seko regime in Zaire in the mid-1970s and the 1980s, such as arming and training the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the unspeakably brutal Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO), and Eritrean and Tigrayan armed separatists in Ethiopia as well as backing the Somali invasion of the Ogaden Desert in that country in 1977.
Over the past five years French troops and bombers have waged deadly attacks inside Cote d'Ivoire, Chad and the Central African Republic either in support of or against rebels, always in furtherance of France's own geopolitical objectives. In the second application of the so-called Blair Doctrine, in 2000 Britain sent troops to its former colony of Sierra Leone and has de facto recolonized the nation, taking control of its military and internal security forces.
But in the post-World War II period there has only been one direct American military action in Africa, the deadly 1986 air strikes against Libya in April of 1986, Operation El Dorado Canyon.
While conducting wars, bombings, military interventions and invasions in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, the Middle East and recently Southeastern Europe over the past half century, the Pentagon has left the African continent comparatively unscathed. That is going to change after the establishment of the United States Africa Command on October 1 of 2007 and its activation a year later.
The U.S. has intensified military involvement in Africa over the past seven years with such projects as the Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI), launched by the State Department but which deployed US Army Special Forces with the Special Operations Command Europe to Mali and Mauritania among other locations. U.S. military personnel are still engaged in the counterinsurgency wars in Mali and Niger against Tuareg rebels.
The Pan Sahel Initiative was succeeded by the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI) in late 2004 which has American military personnel assigned to eleven African nations: Algeria, Burkina Faso, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal.
The Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative was formally launched in June of 2005 with the deployment of 1,000 American troops, among them Green Berets, in Operation Flintlock 05 in North and West Africa to engage with counterparts from seven nations: Algeria, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal and Tunisia.
Until their transfer to the Africa Command (AFRICOM) all 53 nations on the continent except for those in the Horn of Africa (assigned to Central Command) and the island nations of Madagascar and the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean (handled by Pacific Command) were within the area of responsibilty of the European Command (EUCOM), whose top commander is simultaneously the Supreme Allied Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
As such the past two EUCOM and NATO commanders, Marine General James Jones (2003-2006) and Army General Bantz John Craddock (2006-June, 2009), were the most instrumental in setting up AFRICOM.
Jones is now U.S. National Security Adviser and at this February's Munich Security Conference opened his speech with "As the most recent National Security Advisor of the United States, I take my daily orders from Dr. [Henry]Kissinger." [2]
In 2008, while serving as State Department special envoy for Middle East security and chairman of the Atlantic Council of the United States, Jones said, "[A]s commander of NATO, I worried early in the mornings about how to protect energy facilities and supply chain routes as far away as Africa, the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea." [3]
Shortly before stepping down from his military posts with NATO and the Pentagon "NATO's top commander of operations, U.S. General James Jones, has said he sees a potential role for the alliance in protecting key shipping lanes such as those around the Black Sea and oil supply routes from Africa to Europe." [4]
Three years ago a Pentagon web site documented that "Officials at U.S. European Command spend between 65 to 70 percent of their time on African issues, [James] Jones said....Establishing such a group [military task force in West Africa] could also send a message to U.S. companies 'that investing in many parts of Africa is a good idea,' the general said." [5]
During the final months of his dual tenure as NATO's and EUCOM's top military commander, Jones transitioned Africa from EUCOM's to AFRICOM's control while also expanding the role of NATO on the continent.
In June of 2006 the Alliance launched its global Rapid Response Force with its first large-scale military exercises off the coast of the former Portuguese possession of Cape Verde, in the Atlantic Ocean west of Senegal.
U.S press reports of the time offered these details:
"Hundreds of elite North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) troops backed by fighter planes and warships will storm a tiny volcanic island off Africa's Atlantic coast this week in what the Western alliance hopes will prove a potent demonstration of its ability to project power around the world." [6]
"Seven thousand NATO troops conducted war games on the Atlantic Ocean island of Cape Verde on Thursday in the latest sign of the alliance's growing interest in playing a role in Africa.
"The land, air and sea exercises were NATO's first major deployment in Africa and designed to show the former Cold War giant can launch far-flung military operations at short notice.
"'You are seeing the new NATO, the one that has the ability to project stability,' said NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference after NATO troops stormed a beach on one of the islands on the archipelago in a mock assault on a fictitious terrorist camp.
"NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe James Jones, the alliance soldier in charge of NATO operations, said he hoped the two-week Cape Verde exercises would help break down negative images about NATO in Africa and elsewhere." [7]
NATO's first operation in Africa had occurred a year earlier in May of 2005 when the bloc transported African Union troops to the Darfur region of Sudan, at the crossroads of a war-riven region comprised of the Central African Republic, Chad and Sudan.
The Alliance has since deployed warships to the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, last year with Operation Allied Protector, and this August 17 NATO announced that it was dispatching British, Greek, Italian, Turkish and U.S. warships to the area for a new mission, Operation Ocean Shield. These operations don't consist of mere surveillance and escort roles but include regular forced boardings, sniper attacks and other uses of armed and often lethal force.
On August 22 a Netherlands contingent of the complementary European Union naval force off Somalia used an attack helicopter against a vessel in the area which subsequently was taken over by troops from a Norwegian warship.
Over three years before, now U.S. National Security Adviser and then NATO chief military commander James Jones addressing what was his major "national security" concern at the time, "raised the prospect of NATO taking a role to counter piracy off the coast of the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea, especially when it threatens energy supply routes to Western nations." [8]
A month later both he and NATO's then top civilian leader, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, reiterated the above commitment.
"NATOs' [commanders] are ready to use warships to ensure the security of offshore oil and gas transportation routes from Western Africa, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO's Secretary General, reportedly said speaking at a session of the foreign committee of PACE [Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe].
"On April 30 General James Jones, commander-in-chief of NATO in Europe, reportedly said NATO was going to draw up a plan for ensuring the security of oil and gas industry facilities.
"In this respect the bloc is willing to ensure security in unstable regions where oil and gas are produced and transported." [9]
Two months earlier a U.S. Defense Department news source reported this from Jones:
"U.S. Naval Forces Europe, (the command's) lead component in this initiative, has developed a robust maritime security strategy and regional 10-year campaign plan for the Gulf of Guinea region.
"Africa's vast potential makes African stability a near-term global strategic imperative." [10]
Jones "raised the prospect of NATO taking a role to counter piracy off the coast of the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Guinea, especially when it threatens energy supply routes to Western nations" in April of 2006 and the Pentagon and NATO have followed through on his pledge and exactly in those two opposite ends of Africa.
At article a few days ago by Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Project in Washington, DC, called "Africa: U.S. Military Holds War Games on Nigeria, Somalia" provided details on how far plans by James Jones and the Pentagon have progressed over the past three years.
Working with what sketchy information that had been made public about Unified Quest 2008, last year's rendition of what the U.S. Army web site described in an article of this year under the title of and as "Army war games for future conflicts" [11], conducted by the United States Army War College, Volman's article included this information:
"In addition to U.S. military officers and intelligence officers, Unified Quest 2008 brought together participants from the State Department and other U.S. government agencies, academics, journalists, and foreign military officers (including military representatives from several NATO countries, Australia, and Israel), along with the private military contractors who helped run the war games: the Rand Corporation and Booz-Allen.
"The list of options for the Nigeria scenario ranged from diplomatic pressure to military action, with or without the aid of European and African nations. One participant, U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Mark Stanovich, drew up a plan that called for the deployment of thousands of U.S. troops within 60 days....
"Among scenarios examined during the game were the possibility of direct American military intervention involving some 20,000 U.S. troops in order to 'secure the oil,' and the question of how to handle possible splits between factions within the Nigerian government. The game ended without military intervention because one of the rival factions executed a successful coup and formed a new government that sought stability.
"[W]hen General Ward [AFRICOM commander] appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, he cited America's growing dependence on African oil as a priority issue for Africom and went on to proclaim that combating terrorism would be 'Africom's number one theater-wide goal.' He barely mentioned development, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping or conflict resolution. [12]
In addition to nations already shelled, targeted and threatened like Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe and Eritrea, even long-time and staunch U.S. military allies like Nigeria are not beyond the reach of hostile Pentagon action. Nigeria is the main power in the fifteen-nation Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which over the past nine years has deployed troops to Sierra Leone, Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire on the request of the West, but that loyalty will not protect it when its own moment arrives.
The U.S. has employed other countries as regional military proxies - Ethiopia and Djibouti in Northeast Africa, Rwanda in Central Africa, Kenya in both - and has designs on South Africa, Senegal and Liberia for similar purposes.
Since its establishment in October of 2007 AFRICOM has lost little time in marking out the Pentagon's new continent.
Even prior to its formal activation the Pentagon conducted the Africa Endeavor 2008, 23-nation military exercise with forces from Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Gabon, The Gambia, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sweden, Uganda, the U.S. and Zambia as well as representatives from ECOWAS and the African Union. [13]
The operation was held under the auspices of the U.S. European Command at the time as AFRICOM wasn't activated until October of that year but it included the participation of the then fledgling AFRICOM and U.S. Marine Forces Europe (MARFOREUR), U.S. Air Forces in Europe and the Marine Headquarters, Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa [14], but "Next year's exercise will be sponsored by U.S. Africa Command." [15]
This January the U.S. Department of Defense announced that "The U.S. Army Southern European Task Force [SETAF] officially has assumed its new role as the Army component for U.S. Africa Command."
The Pentagon web site from which the above quote is taken also provided this background information and portents of the future:
"Since the 1990s, SETAF has worked with African nations to conduct military training and provide humanitarian relief in countries such as Liberia, Rwanda, Uganda, Congo and the former Zaire [Congo is the former Zaire, as Zaire was the former Belgian Congo].
"In the coming years, SETAF, operating as U.S. Army Africa, will continue to grow and build capacity to meet the requirements needed to coordinate all U.S. Army activities in Africa.
“[U.S. Army Africa] is not an episodic, flash in the pan, noncombative evacuation operation.” [16]
In the same month, demonstrating another new AFRICOM component and the continent-wide reach of the American military and its recently acquired client states, it was reported that "Air Force C-17s will soon begin airlifting special equipment for Rwandan Peacekeepers in the Darfur region of Sudan, marking the kickoff of the first major operation engineered by U.S. Africa Command's air component, Seventeenth Air Force, also known as U.S. Air Forces Africa." [17]
This May the newspaper of the American Armed Forces, Stars and Stripes, carried a feature on joint U.S.-British training of the Rwandan army, one which bears a large part of the blame for the deaths of over five million Congolese since 1998: The biggest loss of life in a nation related to armed conflict since tens of millions of Chinese and Soviets were killed during World War II.
Rwandan and Ugandan troops invaded Congo in 1998 and triggered ongoing cross-border fighting which persists to this day. Rwanda and Uganda are both U.S. and British military client states.
The Stars and Stripes feature detailed that American instructors "are currently working with a team from the British army to train instructors with the Rwandan army. Those instructors will then train their own troops — many of whom will serve as peacekeepers in places such as Sudan." [18]
It quoted a British officer, Maj. Charles Malet, who "leads a contingent of British forces based in Kenya," as saying "We’ve been producing short-term training in this part of the world for a long, long time. [U.S. Africa Command] has stood [up]. It’s great to link up and provide a sort of introduction." [19]
The training of the Rwandan armed forces by the United States and its NATO allies has less to do with Darfur than it does with devastated Congo.
In November of 2008 the United Nations reported that "Rwandan forces fired tank shells and other heavy artillery across the border at Congolese troops during fighting" [20] which began when former Congolese general Laurent Nkunda staged an armed rebellion in the east of the country which led to the displacement of 200,000 civilians.
The BBC revealed at the time that "journalists report that some of Laurent Nkunda's rebel fighters are in the pay of the Rwandan army.
"This has renewed fears that the fighting will see a re-run of the five-year Congolese war, which involved nine nations, before it ended in 2003." [21]
The British Financial Times conducted interviews with "former rebels and observers on the ground" who said that "the uprising – led by Laurent Nkunda, the renegade former Congolese general – relies heavily on recruitment in Rwanda and former or even active Rwandan soldiers."
Referring to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, the report added, "Mr Nkunda and Rwanda’s government, military and business elite share a history....Mr Nkunda, a Congolese Tutsi, was an intelligence officer in the guerrilla army that Mr Kagame, a Rwandan Tutsi, used to...seize power.
"Mr Kagame launched invasions of Congo in 1996 and 1998 and supported uprisings...." [22]
The following month a U.S. congressional delegation "traveled to Rwanda and Ethiopia to meet with U.S. ambassadors, AFRICOM officials and various ministers of each country, including Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Rwanda Foreign Minister Charles Murigande." [23]
Ethiopia invaded Somalia on America's behest three years ago and Rwanda's repeated incursions into Congo could not have occurred without a green light from Washington.
As an Ugandan commentary at the time of the latest attack on Congo from Rwanda stated, "London, New York and Paris are among the top consumers of minerals from Congo. They lecture humanity on the need to uphold human rights and the sanctity of property rights whilst their thirst for strategic minerals unleashes terror on innocent women and children in Eastern Congo." [24]
Last week an AFRICOM spokesman announced that "The United States military will be sending experts to the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo this week." The initial deployment will be small, he added, but "more may follow...." [25] AFRICOM would be better advised to monitor the activities of the Rwandan military it trains and arms.
Also last week the Pentagon stated it was deploying "unmanned reconnaissance aircraft in the skies above the Seychelles archipelago" in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar and AFRICOM commander General William Ward said, "We have the recent arrival of our P-3 Orion maritime patrol aircraft that will aid in conducting the surveillance of Seychelles territorial waters and as we look into the future, (we will) bring unmanned surveillance vehicles." [26]
Two days later Ward said "that the rise of radical Islamist militant group al-Shabab in Somalia makes East Africa a central focus of the U.S. military on the continent."
Voice of America added:
"General William Ward has pledged continued support to Somalia's transitional federal government....He made his remarks during a visit to Nairobi, Kenya, which is a key U.S. ally in region." [27]
Until last October, Africa was the only continent other than Australia and Antarctica without a U.S. military command. The fact that one has now been established indicates that Africa has achieved heightened importance for the Pentagon and its Western military allies.
An analysis of why Africa is a major focus of attention and why now rather than earlier was provided by U.S.-based writer Paul I. Adujie in the New Liberian on August 21:
"America's Africa Command, in conceptual terms and actual implementation, is not intended to serve Africa's best interests. It just happens that Africa has grown in geopolitical and geo-economic importance to America and her allies. Africa has been there all along.
"There were, for instance, reports of how the American military, acting supposedly in partnership or cooperation with the Nigerian military, literally took over Nigerian Defense Headquarters....
"It is probably important to mention that the United States already operates at least three other commands, namely, the European Command (EUCOM), Central Command (CENTCOM) and Pacific Command (PACOM), therefore the Africa Command or (AFRICOM) will be the fourth leg of US military global spread.
"America's Africa Command is...machinery for Western governments to pursue their vaunted economic, political and hegemonic hemispheric influence at the expense of Africans as well as a backdoor through which Westerners can outmaneuver rivals such as China and perhaps Russia in addition." [28]
Notes:
[1]. The Anti-Empire Report, August 4th, 2009http://killinghope.org/bblum6/aer72.html
[2]. Real Clear Politics, February 8, 2009
[3]. Agence France-Presse, November 30, 2008
[4]. Reuters, November 27, 2006
[5]. U.S. Department of Defense, August 18, 2006
[6]. Associated Press, June 21, 2006
[7]. Reuters, June 22, 2006
[8]. Associated Press, April 24, 2006
[9]. Trend News Agency, May 3, 2006
[10]. U.S. Department of Defense, March 8, 2006
[11]. www.army.mil, May 6, 2009
[12]. AllAfrica.com, August 14, 2009
[13]. United States European Command, July 29, 2008
[14]. United States European Command, July 16, 2008
[15]. United States European Command, July 29, 2008
[16]. U.S. Department of Defense, American Forces Press Service, January 28, 2009
[17]. U.S. Air Forces in Europe, January 9, 2009
[18]. Stars And Stripes, May 24, 2009
[19]. Ibid
[20]. Associated Press, November 3, 2008
[21]. BBC News, November 13, 2008
[22]. Financial Times, November 11, 2008
[23]. Times-Journal, December 8, 2008
[24]. Sunday Monitor (Uganda), November 9, 2008
[25]. Daily Nation (Kenya), August 18, 2009
[26]. Reuters, August 19, 2009
[27]. Voice of America News, August 21, 2009
[28]. New Liberian, August 21, 2009
Source:
by courtesy & © 2009
Rick Rozoff
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Rwanda: 'Witness' to Sue Bruguière
By Felly Kimenyi
The New Times-Kigali
August 28, 2009
Kigali- Barely days after the latest witness in the controversial Bruguiére case distanced himself, Richard Mugenzi, has threatened to take legal action against the French judge for wrongly attributing to him things he never said.
Mugenzi, who was considered a key witness in the case filed by French judge Jean Louis Bruguiére, was working as a telecommunications operator (signaller) for the former government army.
Bruguiére alleges that Mugenzi intercepted communication from the Rwandese Patriotic Army (RPA) frequencies and the information he got was linking them to the downing of the plane carrying former president Juvenal Habyarimana.
"It is very surprising when the man refers to me as his witness. It becomes even more disturbing when he attributes to me things I never said at all. For a person like the judge who should be more conversant with the law, this is rather unfortunate," said Mugenzi during an interview with The New Times yesterday.
Mugenzi said that he was under the witness protection unit of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for ten years helping the prosecution. "Am seriously thinking about suing this judge," he told The New Times.
He accused Bruguiére of being unethical by revealing his identity which had been kept under wraps for a decade, saying that this would put his life in danger.
"I was in a protective custody for all those years and this man just went ahead to reveal my identity, when I am not even his witness what guarantee does he give me?" questioned Mugenzi.
He said that he never met the judge for even a single minute. "The only people I met were a group of investigators he sent to meet me in Arusha, and whatever they wrote in the report they gave the judge were just fabrications," he said.
"I only talked of a memo I fabricated for propaganda purposes, claiming that I had intercepted communication from the RPA saying that they had a hand in the shooting. But this, I told them, was a fabricated memo."
Mugenzi said that he explained to the investigators, whom he claim to have met in the office of the ICTR prosecutor, that the memo was drafted for propaganda purposes, telling them the whole thing was just made up.
"They never considered what I told them, it is like they had already made up their minds when they met me, they just needed confirmation that I had indeed drafted the memo," he accused.
The French judge has widely been condemned for the manner in which he conducted the investigations that he based his indictments on nine senior government officials.
Mugenzi said that he came back to Rwanda last year allegedly to 'try and expose the judge' on his indictment that he maintains is based on falsehoods.
Bruguiere-ICTR defence connection Meanwhile, the witness said that Bruguiére came to know about his testimonies through his communication with defence lawyers at the tribunal.
They have a strong connection between the lawyers, Bruguiére and some other Rwandans living abroad, especially those suspected of having played a role in the 1994 Genocide," he said.
He said that he was still 'consulting' to get a better option on which course of action he will take. Mugenzi became the fourth person to retract his testimony since the indictments were issued in November 2007.
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[A Comment to the article "Four Ways to Help Africa" by Jendayi E. Frazer published in The Wall Street Journal on August 25, 2009].
By Felicien Kanyamibwa, PhD
August 27, 2009
The idea of the summit with the dictators who lead Rwanda and Uganda to solve the conflict in the DRC appears flawed and not consistent with Dr. Jendayi Frazer's past advocacy for a tough stance against dictators. I do not think President Bush's summits and individual meetings with Kagame, Museveni and Kabila that Dr. Jendayi Frazer alluded to helped at all. From 2000-2008, we had the warlords Mutebusi, Nkunda, Ntaganda, all supported by Rwanda, wrecking havoc, raping women, recruiting children, and committing war crimes, and mass slaughters of the innocent and defenseless Congolese people.
It is only with the UN Experts Report of December 2008, followed by the decision by Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands to cut aid to the Government of Kigali that the dictator Kagame was forced to stop its military and financial support to the renegade General Nkunda, and eventually dismantle the CNDP as we know it.
President Obama should not have any summit with General Kagame or Museveni.
General Kagame is accused of war crimes, genocide and mass killings of more than 5 millions Congolese. He is under Spanish and French indictments for war crimes and genocide. General Nkunda's CNDP forces, armed, trained, and financed by General Kagame are responsible for war crimes and the rapes. Ms. Clinton heard vivid accounts from the victims of these rapes. It is unfortunate that most of these crimes and rapes happened when Dr. Jendayi Frazer, as Advisor to President Bush and then Assistant Secretary of State, was playing a major role, advising on and then overseeing the US African policy. General Kagame should be treated as a criminal and tried for these crimes.
President Obama should keep his moral high ground and not shake the bloody hands of African dictators. President Obama has a better grasp of African issues and proposes better solutions, as confirmed during Ms. Hillary Clinton's recent trip across Africa. His African policy has more chance of success than the ways advocated by Dr. Jendayi Frazer in the Wall Street Journal.
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USA: Obama urged to meet Kagame, Kabila and Museveni
By RNA Reporter
August 26, 2009
Kigali: Former US senior diplomat Jendayi Fraser has urged President Obama to hold a trilateral summit with Rwanda, Uganda and DR Congo if he is serious about his message of “love” for Africa, RNA reports.
Among what the former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs says are “four quick steps … to translate the rhetoric of love into policies”, Dr. Fraser, as former President Bush's point-women on the conflict-ridden region wants President Obama to hold a summit at the White House with leaders of three countries to end the war in Congo.
Rwandan FDLR rebels are accused of rampaging the east of DRC as well as Uganda LRA rebels in the north east. The two countries were allowed to search for their rebels but the operations ended with mixed results.
Relations between the three governments remain shaky but improving after more than 10years of war which has left millions of refugees and dead. Rwanda and Uganda have already exchanged envoys with DRC but different quarters remain adamant that the conflict in the east of DRC is ending anytime soon.
“President George W. Bush helped to end the interstate wars among Rwanda, Congo and Uganda by holding individual and trilateral meetings with these leaders. Now Mr. Obama needs to galvanize U.S. efforts to end the militia violence of Rwandan and Ugandan rebel groups still operating in the Congo”, Fraser writes in the Wall Street Journal.
“The Department of Defense in particular must move from assessing to actually training disciplined Congolese soldiers capable of protecting Congolese citizens and defending their territory.”
Sounding wary of the Obama administration rhetoric, Dr. Fraser says “…U.S. policy in Africa is not about love.”
“It’s about advancing America’s core interests: promoting economic growth and development, combating terrorism, and fostering well-governed, stable countries”, she argues.
She wants the US government to place Eritrea on the list of state sponsors of terrorism because of its alleged support for Somali militant group al Shabaab. The former top envoy is also opposed to the planned extension of trade preferences in the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) to all developing countries. She also calls for a halt to the transfer of headquarters of the controversial AFRICOM from Germany to Liberia.
“These four steps, more than any love messages, will signal a real commitment that the mutual interests of the U.S. and Africa will remain strong and secure under the Obama administration,” she points out.
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DRC: Letter to Hillary Clinton from South Kivu
By Alvaro Gracia Livera
Paxmundi.info-weblog
August 26, 2009
[One is hard pressed to find media accounts of what the Congolese people want or how they believe that the United States could best play a constructive role in ending the suffering in the Congo. Considering that the United States has played a significant historical role in the stifling of the democratic aspirations of the Congolese people, and the backing of the 1996 and 1998 invasions of the Congo by its allies, Rwanda and Uganda, which unleashed what the United Nations say is the deadliest conflict in the World since World War Two, it is important to hear directly from the Congolese people regarding US engagement in the Congo.
Below is a letter from elected officials in the South Kivu province (one of the two most affected provinces by the wars of aggression against the Congolese people) that captures the essence of what many Congolese have argued since the first invasion in 1996. The world community cannot say that there are no answers or that the problem is too complex to comprehensively address. The Congolese people have the answers and they have articulated them to the global community and world leaders. The question is, will Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, and the world community listen and respond accordingly? Early indications are that they are not inclined to listen to the people as the US is deploying more military advisers to the Congo through its continent-wide discredited AFRICOM program as they did in February of this year==AGL/PM]
TO MADAME SECRETARY OF STATE of USA,
C/O U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa, DR Congo.
We, members of national parliament, elected representatives of the people of South Kivu, welcome your visit to our country and request that you convey our best wishes for success to the current tenant of the White House on the occasion of his election as the head of the USA.
We take the opportunity given to us by your presence on the land of our forefathers, to bring to your attention that the DR Congo that you visit so far is not only affected by the result of wars of aggression unjustly imposed on our people for almost 15 years, but is also a country where the democratic process led by the United Nations is bogged down, thus bringing into question the credibility of the United Nations in a country that throughout its history, hasn’t ceased to be subjected to this huge organization, in both World Wars I & II and the Cold War.
That is why, at first, we urge the Obama Administration to consider the following two points:
1) On behalf of thousands of women raped, buried alive, men emasculated, and all those killed in eastern DR Congo in general, in South Kivu in particular, we urge you to join our voices to demand an end to impunity. First, by the immediate arrest of all those responsible for this tragedy including Laurent Nkundabatware, Bosco Ntaganda, and other accomplices at the heart of this Congolese tragedy.
In so doing, in the eyes of the world community, the USA will have contributed to bringing an end to this unjust and biased policy that ensures the longevity and support of regimes whose leaders have been accused of abusing power and lacking democracy characterized by extreme favoritism concentrated in a handful of people at the expense of the majority of the inhabitants of Central Africa.
Also, today we can confirm to you that the eastern DR Congo has become an oasis for the extermination of innocent people who are defenseless and without any assistance, in the presence of an army that consists of selectively picked executioners which includes former FDLR members repatriated to Rwanda, but recycled and then returned within the CNDP for their incorporation into the FARDC.
In short, a war of attrition is managed wisely and thoroughly fed through the plundering of our resources, the depopulation of areas affected by this war, and very soon their balkanization.
2) This policy has led to the strengthening of mono-ethnic powers in Rwanda and Uganda, where more or less 10% of the population maintains dominance over 90% of the population. It is important to point out that with the support of the USA and the UK primarily, Rwanda released its tribal hatred on the DR Congo where its support and participation alongside pseudo-insurgent movements are undeniable.
Indeed, the involvement of multinational corporations in the delivery of arms and plundering the wealth of the DR Congo in the interest of great powers on one side and on the other, the cases of Mutebusi, Nkundabatware, Bosco Ntaganda, and the flagrant presence of many Rwandan soldiers in the integrated CNDP troops in support of Rwanda confirms our assertion.
Madam Secretary of State,Your trip to Africa in the early months following the ascension to power by His Excellency Barack Hussein Obama is followed with great interest and has generated a lot of hope among the Congolese people who have been overlooked by previous US administrations; it has not been since the 1990s that a personality of the American administration of your rank has set foot on Congolese soil.
That is why, in addition to the major concerns outlined above, we share with you a copy of a memo that we gave to members of the delegation of the Security Council of the United Nations who visited the DR Congo on May 19, 2009 - a memo which tells the tragedy suffered by the Congolese people. This memo can be summarized as follows:
“Since 1994, the superbly armed Hutu, fleeing the advance of the Rwandan Patriotic Army crossed the Congolese border with support of UN operations called ‘turquoise’, headed by France. These Hutus settled in the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu in flagrant violation of all international standards governing the right of asylum or refuge.
Known as the “Interahamwe” or FDLR, Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, and so on, these Hutu particularly stand out in DR Congo by practicing acts of looting, rape, massacre and so on. And since they became a pretext for the authorities in Kigali to justify the presence in DR Congo of their regular army, the results are the current massacres and atrocities suffered by our people at Makobola, Kasika Katogota, Lemera, Nindja, Kaniola , Kalambi, Bunyakiri, Kaziba, Luhwindja, Kalonge, Bukavu, Uvira, Kiliba, Katumba Kalehe, Bwegera, Kamituga, Mwenga, Shabunda, Lugushwa, Ngando, Ndola, Kigulube, Bijombo, Masango Tubimbi, Kakungwe, Mushago, Kitutu, Lubuga , Mutambala, Fizi, Minembwe, Bibokoboko, Baraka, Kagabwe, to name a few, as regards the South-Kivu.
Moreover, Rwanda’s history is punctuated by cyclical and fratricidal wars driven by a spirit of intolerance and retaliation between Hutus and Tutsis. Hence, when it is the Rwandan Tutsi ethnic group that is in power, their countrymen who are in the majority, the Hutus, are in exile: and vice versa. DR Congo has become each time, the country of pilgrimage for them.
Therefore, we members of the national parliament representing South Kivu not only condemn the guilty silence of the international community, particularly the USA, nation par excellence that praises democracy and peace, but we also deplore the role of international organizations specialized in defense of human rights that are not quite vocal as elsewhere regarding this tragedy of a smoldering Congolese genocide.Solutions for the return and the restoration of peace have been explored by the Congolese government, but unfortunately, they came up against the bad faith of external forces pulling the strings of this war in cahoots with some insiders.
These include, by way of illustration:
The meeting in Sun City in South Africa called the inter-Congolese dialogue which led to the transition 1+4 [post conflict reconciliation formula that integrated former rebels into the Congolese government from 2003 – 2006, which included one president and four vice presidents], the Conference of Goma in January 2008, and most recently the joint operations of DR Congo / Rwanda for the tracking of FDLR. The joint operations are replete with collateral damage in North Kivu and South Kivu, where we deplore all loss of life coupled with other incalculable consequences: large-scale movements of populations, famine, disease, evil destruction of property and infrastructure, looting of natural resources, rape, theft, and other degrading treatment.
Rather, the Congolese people, your brother, friend and ally, do not deserve such inhumane treatment. They have done everything to restore peace in the Great Lakes Region. They have nothing left to give to satisfy the warmongering and gluttonous appetites of its neighbors. The Congolese people had vainly obeyed and accepted fallacious schemes and pretexts that served as the basis for the imposition of unjust wars: the case of nationality, access and sharing of political and military power, establishment of a genuine multiparty democracy, mixage, integration for some, brassage for others [mixage and brassage are French security sector jargon that speaks to the integration and reintegration of rebel groups into the Congolese army], repatriation of Rwandan refugees, tracking of FDLR elements, etc.
Faced with this grim picture, We, national MPs from the Province of South Kivu, on the strength of our experience and our solidarity with people who elected us, believe that peace won at the end of the barrel is always ephemeral.
Therefore, for a secure and lasting peace for all parties concerned in the sub-region of the Great Lakes, we offer among others the following proposals:
1. That the international community require of President Paul Kagame, the organization of an inter-Rwandan dialogue that would bring together around one table all the components of the Rwandan tribes, both those inside and outside of the country to find solutions to internal problems between them.
2. The involvement of the United States of America for the establishment in Rwanda of a democracy balanced, thoughtful and non-discriminatory like the position (which we positively welcome) of your current government response to conflicts between Israel and Palestine. This is for the restoration of a lasting peace, on the one hand among Rwandans themselves on their soil and between the State of Rwanda and the DR Congo on the other hand.
3. The contribution of the USA in the strict regulation of the sale, delivery and purchase of arms and munitions to leaders implicated in the conflict in the Great Lakes sub-region, essentially Rwanda and Uganda.
4. Placing under embargo all American and Western firms trafficking in mineral resources known as “blood” (coltan, diamonds, gold, cassiterite, etc.).
5. The establishment of international justice (ICC) that punishes all political leaders and economic players in the sub-region or elsewhere involved in the war.
6. The establishment of a development plan, like the Marshall plan, with pragmatic integration projects in the sub-region of the Great Lakes in general and in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo in particular.
7. The involvement of MONUC in first, sorting out the Rwandan elements integrated within the CNDP so that they can return to their country, Rwanda, and second in assisting with removing military officers of all stripes involved in the armed conflict outside the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.
8. The redefinition of the mission and role of MONUC in order to avoid the atrocities and abuses deplored above.
9. In the end, we members of National members of Parliament representing South-Kivu, hope that your stay in our country, unlike the bitter and sad experiences (political, diplomatic, economic, commercial, social, cultural, humanitarian …) we have experienced and according to some analysts well versed in the history of the DR Congo, say now is the time to lay the foundations for sincere bilateral cooperation that will be beneficial for both the American and Congolese people.
Thus, in the framework of this cooperation that we hope will be reciprocal and harmonious, and taking into account the geostrategic position of the DR Congo, we recommend that the Obama administration deal directly with Congolese institutions legally established in place of intermediaries or subcontractors.
Kinshasa on August 5, 2009
National Members of Parliament of South Kivu presented in Kinshasa
1. Hon KANYEGERE LWABOSHI Samuel, (243) 990903345
2. Hon Birindwa CHANIKIRE Solide, (243) 990903329
3.Hon Masumbuko BASHOMBA Christophe, (243) 990903364
4.Hon BASHOMBERWA Martha, (243) 990903115
5. KIKA zamud Hon Marie-Jeanne, (243) 90903625
6. Hon Bapolisi Bahuga Paulin, (243) 990903113
7. Hon BITAKWIRA Hayi BIHONA-Justin, (243) 990903330
8. Hon MPANANO NTAMWENGE Roger, (243) 990902475
9. Hon BUHERWA LUPINI Désiré,
Reprinted from translation by Friends of Congo
The Last Frontier: Western Politics of Domination and Control in Africa
By Jerry Okungu
Africa News Online
Nairobi, Kenya
August 19, 2009
When did Somalis overthrow Siad Barre? It must be 20 years now or there about. After Siad Barre came one General Aideed. He is the Somali warlord credited with disorganizing the America humanitarian marines deployed to bring food supplies, law and order in to war-torn Somalia in the early days of Bill Clinton’s presidency.
The encounter left the Americans with blood on their noses and a humiliating experience that saw a dead body of one marine dragged along Mogadishu streets as barefoot Somali fighters celebrated America’s humiliation. These horror pictures were so devastating to the American public back home that Bill Clinton ordered the operation stopped and the rest of the marines evacuated. The only remaining super power had been badly humiliated by a wretched ragtag army in the Third World.
For close to 20 years, successive American administrations have been weary of meddling in Somali conflict. More importantly, America has thought it is wise not to engage Somalis directly for whatever reason as they have done with Iraqis, Afghans, Koreans and Vietnamese in recent years. Instead, they have used neighboring countries like Ethiopia and Uganda to contain the Osama bin Laden influence in that chaotic lawless country.
The downing of an American fighter helicopter in Mogadishu was horrific enough. The myth of American airpower was put in doubt. This informs why for the last six years, since George Bush launched massive bombing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan to rout Al Qaida from those enclaves, it is difficult to measure credible successes compared to massive destruction of infrastructure, millions of civilian lives lost and thousands of American soldiers killed in those conflicts.
The American involvement in the current Somali conflict is something that has confused analysts on the scene. More curiously, it has not been the kind of involvement that would be considered humanitarian. It is more to do with arms supplies to one side of the conflict than anything else.
One wonders what will happen if the present good boy of Mogadishu turns against the hands that fed him just like Osama bin Laden did after the Russian Afghan conflict.
It is obvious to us that when Ethiopia decided to invade Somalia in support of the ousted Abdulahi Yusuf, it was to defeat an Islamic “terrorist “ group then led by the current interim president. The Ethiopian air power scattered the Islamic Courts insurgents forcing their commanders to take refuge in Yemen. Now, hardly a year later, this former Al Qaida sympathizer has suddenly become the good boy worthy of American arms supply.
America’s involvement in the Horn of Africa’s conflict is not something new. It is as old as our independence. We remember that at one point when Siad Barre’s regime was the darling of the Soviet Union, Americans were the biggest supporters of Emperor Haile Selassie. However, when the brutal Mengitsu Haile Mariam overthrew the monarch and established a communist socialist regime on the model of the Kremlin with full backing from Moscow, Americans quickly filled the vacuum the USSR had left in Mogadishu.
Therefore as the Ogaden war erupted between Ethiopia and Somalia, it was really a war of influence between Moscow and Washington. No wonder no one won the war. Yet both super powers achieved their primary objectives. Their arms industries found ready-made markets in the Horn of Africa. And even after the Ogaden war, other civil wars had to continue in both countries for decades with Ethiopian one being conducted in two phases. The first phase had to do with getting rid of Mengitsu while the second phase pitted former allies against one another. It was Eritrea’s war of cessation.
As Ethiopia continued to slide deeper and deeper into protracted civil wars, Somalia never rested after the Ogaden war either. More prolonged conflicts finally threw Siad Barre out in the early 1990s. One would have expected a new regime, more humane to replace Barre and restore sanity into the country. It was not to be. The era of warlords had arrived.
We all know that very few African countries are in the business of manufacturing arms of any kind save for South Africa. We are all net importers of military armaments we deploy in our conflicts. We don’t even manufacture gas masks, teargas , bullet-proof vests and helmets. All we export to industrialized Europe, America and China are raw materials like oil, diamonds, gold, uranium, tea and coffee, most of which they extract themselves and pay us peanuts for. In exchange our countries have huge and secretive military budgets that we must spend year in year out whether we are at war or not.
This state of affairs has been made worse by our selfish, unfocussed and uncaring political leadership from our region for nearly half a century. At the center of it all is deep seated corruption and insatiable greed for individual wealth. This is the greed that has enslaved our countries to the industrialized nations with occasional belief that we can depend on them in our hour of need when hunger ravages our neighborhoods. It is a slave-master relationship that will take time to break.
Note:
Contact the author at Jerryokungu@gmail.com.
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Burundi: The book "Strength in What Remains" tells an inspiring story of survival
By Jeanne Nicholson
August 23, 2009
Tracy Kidder is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author (The Soul of a New Machine, Mountains Beyond Mountains) whose latest book, Strength in What Remains, tells the extraordinary true story of a young man who grew up in the mountains of Burundi and survived a civil war and genocide before seeking a new life in America.
Deo and his family did not belong to the ruling group of Tutsis; they had no political connections and only his good grades and a high mark on the nationwide exam administered to sixth graders allowed him to be admitted to one of Burundi’s best high schools.
He boarded there, wore shoes for the first time and his world expanded. Once again, Deo’s exceptionally high grade on the national post-secondary school test resulted in a scholarship to a university in Belgium, to train for the priesthood. But Deo wanted to go to Burundi’s medical school instead.
When he arrived in Bujumbura for his first year of study, he owned only one shirt with a collar, which he washed at night and let dry in his open window. One pair of pants lasted his entire first year. Medical school was a paradise to Deo. Grades were posted and his name consistently appeared in the top five. He knew almost nothing of the deeply rooted divisions between Hutu and Tutsi tribes in his country.
Then in April 1994, Rwanda’s genocide began. Kidder advises that Burundi’s tragedy was less notorious but much more prolonged, continuing through the 1990s and into the new millennium.
It was the aftermath of 1988 massacres of Burundian Tutsis and counter-massacres of Hutus. Forced to run for his life from his dormitory as fellow students (Hutus) sought to kill him, Deo spent the next six months on the run, first from the eruption of violence in Burundi, then from the slaughter in Rwanda.
Kidder writes, “In his conscious mind, Deo was aware of being afraid, not of dying, but of dying the way his uncle the doctor had. Not that he wanted to die. Not that he wanted desperately to live. Survival simply had its own momentum. And to survive, it was clear, he had to get out of Rwanda.”
Improbable as it might seem, the fall of 1995 found Deo in New York entering his freshman year at Columbia University. How Deo survived is an inspiring, breathtaking story and the essence of this extraordinary book. For all the evil Deo escaped, he found kindness and compassion with strangers in New York who changed his life forever.
Africa: A new era dawns in Rwanda
Fifteen years after the genocide, it's a country of staggering beauty and shocking scars.
By Tyler Stiem
August 22, 2009
[As I stumble through the school, I meet a tour group from Kigali and get to talking with a student named Félicien. Questions about Rwandese identity do not make for polite conversation, but I can't resist asking about what I saw in the capital. Félicien shakes his head. “At school, at work – okay. I can be Rwandese. But all of the time I am Tutsi.”]
I like our chances, even as the front tire throws rags against the highway and the dusk-soaked hills wobble and shrug their silhouettes. The taxi driver steers the motorcycle into the shoulder and we slide to a sprawling stop in the dirt. I extract myself from the mess, filthy and unhurt. Unbelievably – because this is East Africa – I'm wearing a helmet. But this is Rwanda, and they do things differently here.
A farmer rushes over to see if we're all right. It wasn't a bad crash, but the bike's front rim is a mess. The driver hovers mournfully over his taxi. I can see the curve of electrified shoreline where the towns of Gisenyi and Goma meet on the Congolese border. Lake Kivu is a lurid mirror, inset.
“If this was Uganda, our heads would be on the other side of the road,” he jokes, in a sudden fit of good humour.
You arrive in Rwanda with certain ideas about the place. If you work in the region, as I sometimes do, then you've heard the stories about the country's “miracle” recovery from the 1994 genocide. When I told my Ugandan colleagues about my holiday plans, they were enthusiastic. Rwanda, they said, is safe, orderly, prosperous. In spite of the accident, I'm inclined to agree.
But it's also place of oppressive beauty and roiling cultural complexity. Post-genocide Rwanda is an experiment in social engineering. In recent years, the government has enacted new laws on everything from Rwandese identity (Hutu/Tutsi distinctions are discouraged) to the use of plastic shopping bags (they're banned). There are speed laws, laws against littering and bribery, and yes, a law mandating helmets for motorcyclists.
I'm transfixed by this spectacle of a society striving to remake itself. For a week, I make a point of avoiding the memorials, but there's no escaping the genocide's legacy. Highway billboards inform citizens of their duty to remember. Villages commemorate their dead with humble monuments. Prisoners bury fibre-optic cable by the roadside, wearing cheerful jumpsuits – orange for convicted genocideurs , pink for those who await trial.
Yet, it's these reminders of human catastrophe that make poignant Rwanda's extreme physical beauty. As I travel high into the hills above the capital, Kigali, the forest thickens. Conifers line the immaculate switchbacks and farming communities dribble down the valley walls.
Cabins replace mud and wattle huts. Crop terraces lash every hillside, yielding to plots of silvery pyrethrum lower down. The wilds of Africa's most densely populated country have been tamed, picturesquely, but in this, too, there is the intimation of tragedy: Overpopulation was, and remains, a source of conflict.
On Mount Bisoke, in the Parc National des Volcans, I encounter a different kind of ghost. Halfway up the liquefying mountainside on a day beset by rain, my guide, a park ranger named D., lingers over a pile of gorilla dung. I'm hoping for a fugitive encounter. But the dung is old, and D. is more interested in the path running perpendicular to ours.
“Walk here,” he says, “and you get to the grave of Dian Fossey.” Fossey, the patron saint of the mountain gorilla, was murdered in the 1980s. Today, the organization that bears her name leads the country's exemplary conservation effort.
We plod on, up a trench of volcanic mud that sucks and farts at our boots. It's hard going. From the trees I can hear the crackle of radios. Three soldiers have been assigned to us for protection, I'm told, “against buffalo.” Clouds scud the crater lake, which gives off a mineral shine.
“This,” D. says, “is the Congo border. You cross it, and all bets are off.” Rwanda takes great care to protect the critically endangered mountain gorillas, who number less than 800 in the wild, but their range extends into the anarchic Democratic Republic of Congo, where they're poached for meat, hides and fetishes.
The next day, I sign up for one of the park's dedicated gorilla treks. I'd balked at the price – about $555 for an hour-long visit – but now I feel like I need to see them. At dawn, one of D.'s colleagues leads me and three other excited tourists into the bamboo forest that circles the slopes of a neighbouring volcano.
We're tracking the Susa, a troop that has made Rwanda its semi-permanent home. We find the animals in a clearing near the edge of the forest. They idle in knots of five, six, eight, dozing and eating and grooming.
The ranger squat-walks toward the largest silverback and grunts submissively. The male regards us for a second or two and scratches his jaw, a gesture of almost theatrical indifference. He's massive, at least 450 pounds, with a head like a boulder and an expressive face that betrays his curiosity. Another silverback, one of the younger males, lies on a bed of vines, surrendering to the ministrations of a female. Two youngsters play-fight silently, baring their teeth and rounding their lips as if to hoot.
“They are pacifists, did you know that?” the ranger whispers. A female wanders by with an infant, a bundle of stringy limbs and matted fur, cradled in one arm. A protective teenager follows her.
“Gorillas like harmony. The younger males, they wait until the leader is not looking and they jiggy-jiggy the females. They do not fight him. He teaches them and they respect him as the leader until he grows old and dies.”
Their calm is contagious. I feel relaxed and oddly humbled. When we leave the forest, the farmers' fields are a shock. The hills roll on for miles, silver and green and black.
And then, finally, I visit the genocide memorials. I go first to the Kigali Memorial Centre. Housed in an elegant pavilion on one of the city's many hills, it serves as both a museum and a mausoleum. A quarter-million of the dead were exhumed from mass graves and reburied here, beneath a garden.
The exhibition traces the genocide from its roots in the colonial era, when ethnic differences between the Hutu and Tutsi were exaggerated by European pseudoscience, to the frenzied bloodletting of those 100 days in 1994 – and you follow the narrative with a quickening sense of dread. The exhibition goes so far as to explain away ethnicity altogether, describing “Hutu” and “Tutsi” as markers, in their original sense, of class rather than tribe. (I can understand what the government is trying to do, but rewriting history, even in the interests of unity, strikes me as wrong-headed.)
The same day, I visit Murambi Polytechnic School in Gikongoro, two hours south, where classrooms occupy a flowery bluff surrounded on all sides by more hills. There, the bodies of several thousand Tutsis and moderate Hutus have been preserved in situ with lime. Arranged on platforms, the bodies look at first like sculpture, abstractions of violent death. Then you make out a rag of T-shirt, a shard of femur breaking skin, a fontanelle ripped and fringed with soft hair.
The horror of the genocide is in the details.
As I stumble through the school, I meet a tour group from Kigali and get to talking with a student named Félicien. Questions about Rwandese identity do not make for polite conversation, but I can't resist asking about what I saw in the capital. Félicien shakes his head. “At school, at work – okay. I can be Rwandese. But all of the time I am Tutsi.”
I accept their offer of a ride to Butare, the nearest city and Rwanda's intellectual capital. There, among the students and the flowering trees, we'll eat lamb brochette and drink Primus beer. And we'll argue happily about another contentious subject – soccer.
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Rwanda: Tribunal's Work Incomplete - 25,000 to 45,000 Rwandan Patriotic Front Killings From 1994 Never Addressed
By Human Rights Watch
(Washington, DC)
August 17, 2009
Press release
New York-The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda may lose its credibility unless it indicts and tries Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) officers suspected of having committed war crimes in Rwanda in 1994, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to the tribunal's chief prosecutor made public today.
Responding to claims by the chief prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, that he has done everything he can to investigate crimes on all sides for the events of 1994, the letter points out that the tribunal has brought to justice leading figures behind the genocide but failed to pursue officers of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the rebel group that ended the genocide and has since become Rwanda's governing party. The RPF is alleged to have killed between 25,000 and 45,000 civilians in the same three-month period.
"The prosecutor's failure to commit to prosecuting senior RPF officers has undermined his credibility and that of the ICTR," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Time is running out for him to fulfill his mandate and to secure the tribunal's legacy as a champion of justice and accountability for all victims in Rwanda."
"The prosecutor's failure to commit to prosecuting senior RPF officers has undermined his credibility and that of the ICTR," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Time is running out for him to fulfill his mandate and to secure the tribunal's legacy as a champion of justice and accountability for all victims in Rwanda."
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly urged Jallow to outline his plans for prosecuting the Rwandan Patriotic Front's crimes before the tribunal's tenure ends at the end of 2010.
In response to Human Rights Watch's previous requests, the prosecutor issued a letter suggesting that his office did not have enough evidence to bring prosecutions against Rwandan Patriotic Front officers. The prosecutor defended his June 2008 decision to transfer an RPF case to Rwanda to be prosecuted there. He reiterated his position that Rwanda's attempt to hold RPF officers to account in last year's domestic trial - known as the Kabgayi case - met international fair trial standards. Human Rights Watch's own monitoring of the trial concluded the proceedings amounted to a political whitewash and a miscarriage of justice.
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Letter to ICTR Chief Prosecutor Hassan Jallow in Response to His Letter on the Prosecution of RPF Crimes
HRW urges prosecutions of Rwandan leaders
By United Press International
August 17, 2009
NEW YORK, Aug. 17 (UPI) -- The Rwandan genocide tribunal still needs to prosecute war crimes allegedly perpetrated by the now-ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front, advocates say.
The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has done its job in bringing to justice leading figures behind the genocide, but it has so far failed to pursue certain officers of the RPF, Human Rights Watch said in a release issued in New York Monday. The officers, while bringing the 1994 genocide to an end, were alleged to have killed between 25,000 and 45,000 civilians, HRW said.
A declaration by the tribunal's prosecutor, Hassan Jallow, that he has done everything he can to investigate crimes on all sides of the genocide brought a rejoinder from HRW.
"The prosecutor's failure to commit to prosecuting senior RPF officers has undermined his credibility and that of the ICTR," Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in the release.
The human rights group said Jallow has repeatedly failed to outline his plans for prosecuting the Rwandan Patriotic Front's alleged crimes before the tribunal's tenure ends at the end of 2010.
Jallow has told the United Nations he does not have enough evidence to prosecute RPF officers, HRW said.
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Group Warns Against 'Victor's Justice' in Rwanda Genocide
By Alan Boswell
August 18, 2009
A human rights group chastises the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda for failing to prosecute any officials of the Tutsi military group that eventually ended the 1994 genocide, despite allegations of planned civilian killings on its part. Human Rights Watch warns the court will lose credibility if only one side of the conflict is prosecuted.
The group is calling on the chief prosecutor for the United Nations-backed court to try senior Rwandan Patriotic Front officials before the court's tenure draws to a close next year.
The London director for Human Rights Watch, Tom Porteous, explains the group's letter to the chief prosecutor.
"The International Criminal Tribunal of Rwanda has done a good job in prosecuting perpetrators of the genocide in Rwanda, but we feel that it should turn its attention to members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, who committed very serious violations - crimes against humanity, war crimes - in the aftermath of the genocide," Porteous said.
Porteous suggests that unless the court tries both sides of the conflict, the court's mandate for neutral justice will be unfulfilled.
"So far the ICTR has failed to prosecute any senior Rwandan Patriotic Front officers, and this we feel will undermine the credibility of the ICTR," he said.
Led by now-president Paul Kagame, the Tutsi RPF overran the Hutu militias orchestrating the genocide in Rwanda and effectively ended the three-month massacre of ethnic Tutsi and moderate Hutu. The RPF has held power in Rwanda since securing the nation in 1994.
While the vast majority of the 800,000 deaths in 1994 were committed by the radical Hutu militias, a U.N. agency has alleged that the RPF was also responsible for 25,000 to 45,000 civilian deaths.
Human Rights Watch claims that the court holds ample evidence linking the upper ranks of RPF to some of the retaliatory civilian killings. The group suggests that the chief prosecutor may be caving in to political pressure from the RPF-led Rwandan government.
The group says that the few prosecutions by the Rwandan judiciary against members of the RPF for the post-genocide violence have focused on low-level officials and have ignored evidence that the attacks may have been directed from high up the military chain.
The Tanzanian-based International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda was established by the U.N. after the 1994 genocide to try the suspected criminals of the Rwanda violence according to international standards of justice.
In a letter responding to Human Rights Watch, chief prosecutor Hassan Jallow rebuffs the group's accusations, denying that political intimidation from the Rwandan government was stifling prosecutions of RPF officials.
Jallow confirmed that his court has indeed focused on the Hutu perpetrators of the genocide since that was the main purpose for the court's creation. He said that hundreds of those responsible of the genocide are still at-large and have not yet been indicted or arrested by the court.
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