The UPC, FPRI, FNI—these are three of the scores of militias that have risen and fallen in Orientale since the war began in 1996 and, more poignantly, they are meaningless acronyms used to scramble the brains of western spectator-news-consumers.
First there was the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army (RPF/A) that invaded Rwanda, and then came the Alliance for the Democratic Liberation of Zaire (ADFL) that marched across Zaire to unseat President Mobutu. Next came the "rebellion" with Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC), and all the different factions of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie, or Congolese Rally for Democracy—RCD, RCD-G (Goma), RCD-K, RCD-K-ML—backed by Rwanda and Uganda.
Here are the comrades in arms who studied together at the Marxist University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania: Yoweri Museveni, Uganda's president; Laurent Desiré Kabila, the ADFL figurehead and assassinated president of the Democratic Republic of Congo; Meles Zenawi, president of Ethiopia; Isaias Afwerki, president of Eritrea; Africa scholar Mahmood Mamdani; former RCD leader Wamba dia Wamba; Paul Kagame, Rwanda's president; and John Garang (d. 2005), former leader of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and first president of South Sudan.
Both the RPF/A and SPLA waged successful covert guerrilla wars against governments that were considered "undesirable" by Washington; both achieved their objectives of seizing land and gaining control, and both insurgencies were covertly backed by U.S. Committee for Refugees official Roger Winter—a pivotal U.S. intelligence asset operating in Sudan and a dedicated ally of Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame and John Garang.
Winter's protégé is Susan Rice, Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. Rice was one of the primary architects of the Pentagon's prized Africa Crisis Response Initiative (ACRI)—a euphemistically named entity created to project U.S. power in Africa, and run by U.S. Army Special Forces Command (SOCOM).[2]
The coups d'etat in Rwanda and Burundi occurred after the presidents Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira were assassinated on April 6, 1994. Similarly, more than a decade of covert U.S. military support for the SPLA, channeled through Uganda and Ethiopia, led to the Naivasha Peace Agreement of January 2005 and the creation of the autonomous country of South Sudan.
The "Rwanda genocide" began with the 1990 invasion of northern Rwanda by Ugandan forces that brutally targeted everyone in their path. By the time the RPF/A forces—comprised mostly of seasoned Ugandan troops—reached Kigali, more than 800,000 IDPs (internally displaced persons) were hovering around the capital city: they were terrified, they were homeless, they were hungry, they were angry and—justifiably—they took up arms. The United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) and its Canadian General Romeo Dallaire clandestinely backed the illegal guerrilla war.[3]
The guerrilla wars in Rwanda and South Sudan were prosecuted much like the CIA-backed low-intensity guerrilla warfare, spawned by Washington, against populist movements in Honduras, Nicaragua, Chile and Guatemala. This is exactly what is playing out in Congo and Sudan today: low-intensity guerrilla warfare prosecuted by powerful shadow forces competing for land and loot.
SPLA leader John Garang received military training at the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Georgia. Paul Kagame received training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. At the time he was sent for training, Kagame was Museveni's director of military intelligence; upon his return he assumed command of the army created, financed and trained by Uganda: the Rwanda Patriotic Army.
Both Garang and Kagame likely received "counter-insurgency" training through the Pentagon's International Military Education and Training Program (IMET). Since 1998, the IMET program has provided training to 318 RDF and 291 UPDF soldiers. Many other IMET soldiers who attended the notorious School of the Americas are today known human rights violators in Latin America.
In North Kivu province we find the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and the National Congress for the Defense of the People, the CNDP, created by self-appointed Rwandan "General" Laurent Nkunda. Here the media has historically cast General Nkunda as good, the FDLR as evil. Only recently has Nkunda come under any kind of "harsh" criticism.
The war in Eastern Congo is almost universally described with clichés about the "Rwanda genocide." The usual targets of white media racial profiling and hysterical academic polemics are the Hutu—the infamous Interahamwe and FDLR—the "killers" that "fled Rwanda after committing genocide" there. This is how millions of innocent Hutu people—comprising over 85% of the populations of Rwanda and Burundi—are collectively dehumanized.
Congolese Mai Mai militias are described as "nationalists" sometimes "wearing bathroom fixtures on their heads" and "shooting magic bullets." The Mai Mai are the closest thing to a people's or indigenous justice movement in Congo. The Mai Mai have most recently allied with the Congo's national army, the Armed Forces for the Democratic Republic of Congo (FARDC), and the Mai Mai are sometimes cast as good, but usually as evil.
In 2007 the Mai Mai and FLDR joined forces to form the Front for the National Liberation of Kivu (FNLK). Backed by the FARDC, the FNLK is purportedly vying for power against General Nkunda's CNDP. However, alliances are constantly shifting based on private profit and "warlord" fiefdoms, and ALL factions, at some point or other, have collaborated in war and resource plunder.
Western news stories throw the acronyms and names of militias around with little or no information about their rise or fall, and nothing substantive about foreign backers they collaborate with. Militias mysteriously appear and disappear. Indeed, the more you read about Congo from venues like the New York Times, Harper's, The New Yorker, or the Atlantic Monthly, the less you will understand. This is no accident, and—no, you are not dumb.
Take the militia FNI: but for the victims and their suffering, it makes no difference what the acronym stands for, it's all one big sadistic joke of language and power. The most significant fact to remember about this "F" "N" "I" is that they served as the private proxy army for the gold mining operations of Metalor, a Swedish firm, and AngloGold Ashanti, headquartered in South Africa and partnered with Barrick Gold.[4] Secondly, they were agents for Ugandan power brokers.
Anglo-Gold Ashanti directors include Sir Sam Jonah, who is also a director of shady mining-cum-military companies operating in Sierra Leone and connected to Tony Buckingham and other white-collar mercenaries. Buckingham affiliated companies—e.g. Heritage Oil and Gas, Branch Energy, Saracen Uganda—collaborate with the Museveni regime. Saracen's top shareholder is General Salim Saleh, half-brother of Yoweri Museveni, and Congo's nemesis, a Ugandan agent cited by the United Nations for war and plunder in Congo.
AngloGold Ashanti is the Anglo American mining conglomerate of the Oppenheimers and De Beers mining cartels of Britain and South Africa, interests deeply aligned with Belgian American intelligence insider Maurice Tempelsman—the godfather of covert operations in Africa. Tempelsman's diamond interests in Congo were, at least partially, displaced by the Israeli cartels of Dan Gertler and Benny Steinmetz.[5] It is a no-brainer that the Tempelsman gang backs Rwanda's occupation of eastern Congo.
For a second example, media corporations have consistently blacked out the truth about the lucrative corporate "conservation" industry with articles like the recent New York Times production "Congo Violence Reaches Endangered Mountain Gorillas" (Jeffrey Gettleman, 11/18/08). Unreported however are the many accusations coming out of North Kivu that link the Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund to local Mai Mai and FDLR: like every other militia, or occupation army, these factions have infiltrated villages and now prey on, intimidate and abuse the locals. The white agents working for Western "conservation" NGOs—and we know their names—are directly responsible for extortion, racketeering, land theft, human rights atrocities and for ripping apart the social fabric.[6]
"The commander of the Mai-Mai is Colonel Ntasibanga and the commander of the FDLR is Colonel Faraja," report Congolese locals who have been documenting the abuses (the facts are confirmed by a Spanish journalist). "We count already five people killed because of this [conservation] project… DFGF and JGI are without doubt corrupt… they are paying armed groups and forcing us off of our lands." [7]
The Gettleman NYT article, on the other hand, cites one of these agents, Samantha Newport, described as "a spokeswoman for Virunga National Park," who in fact works for Richard Leakey's organization Wildlife Direct, a shady paramilitary entity involving Walter Kansteiner.
~ more... ~
“In Africa Genocide Article, Writer Distorts Our Book” By Kevin Funk and Steven Fake, December 6th, 2008 and “Response To A Reaction To My Article” By Keith Harmon Snow
ReplyDeletehttp://blackstarnews.com/?c=135&a=5185
As the authors of "The Scramble for Africa: Darfur - Intervention and the USA," we find it necessary to respond to Keith Harmon Snow's highly confused and misleading references to our work, and the strange litany of positions he attributes to it, and to us.
Harmon Snow writes that "The book makes no mention of covert operations or private military companies operating in South Sudan or Darfur." Yet this is demonstrably false. We mention the role of Dyncorp in both south Sudan and Darfur (page 88), and, more prominently, Blackwater – in fact, twice in the main text (88, 115), and also for two paragraphs in an endnote (248). Perhaps Harmon Snow's razor eye for detail somehow missed the book's index, in which both companies are listed.
He roundly condemns us for citing "ad nauseum all the usual propagandists," like Eric Reeves. But of course citing does not mean approving. In fact, we label Reeves a "hawkish commentator and invasion advocate" (xxvii), and at different points observe that he pursues his arguments "bizarrely" (xxvii), "very naïvely (to be charitable)," and that he is simply "wrong" (272). In a broader point, even in writing from a leftist perspective, there is of course value in referencing mainstream works (in addition to left-wing ones) where appropriate, as doing so serves to broaden the audience that will be open to the arguments.
As is obvious, relatively few who are not already leftists will be swayed if citations are only given to left-wing works, though if a critique of US policy appears "even" in the New York Times or another mainstream publication, it is much likelier to resonate with the broader public.
Harmon Snow also incorrectly notes that while we call Omar al-Bashir a "major war criminal," we "never similarly condemn" Western powers such as the U.S. and Israel, and their leaders. Again, the factual record, easily available to anyone who reads the book, indicates otherwise.
We note that, "Given that the U.S. has been named the biggest threat to world security in polls of global opinion, one may wonder when a blue-helmeted UN liberation force will be deployed to the streets of Washington to halt its war against the people of Iraq" (64), and that Washington's concerns about the ICC are a reflection of the fact that "it might become a serious instrument for justice, and will thus turn to investigating US crimes" (xxxviii). We reference Israel's "ethnic
cleansing of Palestinians" (63), its "war crimes" (116), and the fact that its "massive crimes are perceived to be in service of Western geopolitical interests" (64). Again, the positions Harmon Snow attributes to us are utterly unrecognizable.
Even where Harmon Snow directly cites our work, he deftly manages to misrepresent our arguments. Referencing our comment in the foreword that, "there would be little to mourn in Bashir's overthrow, and such a move—depending, of course, on the actors involved, and its prospects for success—could be cautiously supported," he comments that, "In other words, it's fine for white people from the United States to organize the overthrow of sovereign governments, as long as we selectively chose the 'right' people for the job."
We make our assertion in the context of discussing the Justice and Equality Movement-led coup attempt against Khartoum in May of this year. There is simply nothing about non-Sudanese trying "to organize" a coup, and in actuality we argue vehemently in the book against any
sort of foreign-led regime change in Khartoum, and spend an entire chapter on the imperialist uses of the doctrine of "humanitarian intervention." Rather, as is obvious to any individual with any notion of the concept of "solidarity," our comments mean that we stand with the oppressed segments of the Sudanese population in their struggle for justice, whether their oppression comes from internal or foreign sources.
What we present above suggests one of three conclusions: (1) that Harmon Snow did not read the book, (2) that he read it and did not understand it, or, (3) that he read it, understood it, and
nevertheless chose to deliberately misrepresent the analysis presented therein. We will not speculate on which of the three, or perhaps some combination of them, is behind his mangling of our arguments, though none of the possibilities qualify him to be writing about our analysis
in the first place.
We invite the editors and readers to draw their own conclusions about the merits of our book and arguments (our website www.scrambleforafrica.org features several excerpts from the text,
as well as our other writings on the Darfur conflict), and expect that this letter will be appropriately included on the page containing his article.
Putting aside the serious mischaracterizations of our book in this article, we are very pleased to see analyses that challenge the distorted narratives of the Western corporate press reaching readers. It is impossible for those of us living in the U.S. to act in solidarity with the oppressed in Africa unless the realities and true causes of African conflicts are known. That is particularly true when our government plays a direct role in the violence.
Kevin Funk and Steven Fake, authors of Scramble For Africa: Darfur - Intervention
and the USA
www.scrambleforafrica.org
Response To A Reaction To My Article:
By Keith Harmon Snow
Thanks so much for posting the complaints of these authors, however, I'm surprised at their hubris. My article does not set out to review their book, but to situate it. Readers should indeed make their own assessments, keeping a few critical points in mind.
While the names Dyncorp and Blackwater do indeed appear in the book, I invite readers to examine these limited appearances, and while labeling Dr. Eric Reeves as "hawkish" and "wrong" the authors nonetheless engage his wrongness. In comparison, on both of the above, see: OIL IN DARFUR? COVERT OPS IN SOMALIA? www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=24>.
Their complaints avoid my critique of Alex De Waal. The foundation of the book is built on the propaganda produced by a Western intelligence insider (De Waal) whose name (references, footnotes, excerpts of his writings, policy prescriptions) appears over 165 times in 127 pages.
De Waal was pivotal (1995) in institutionalizing the establishment narrative about "genocide" in Rwanda, which These authors regurgitate throughout: the Hutus did it. Their discussions of past "interventions" and "genocide" re: Haiti, Rwanda and Somalia -- is premised on the Rwanda mythology and, like their assessments of "interventions" in Haiti and Somalia, are uninformed.
The authors' further argue around the works of propagandists like Stephanie McCrummen -- a.k.a. Boston Globe, Washington Post, NYT, etc. -- who has produced corporate garbage about gorillas in Congo that has been roundly trashed, while covering up for Walter Kansteiner and Richard Leakey, Jane Goodall Institute etc. (See: "S.O.S. in Eastern Congo"
www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=45 .)
There is no criticism, but instead wholesale approval, of the International Crises Group and its' many satellites and colonies. Ditto their uses of editorials and commentaries etc. by John
Prendergast or Wesley Clark-- a former general and champion of the new humanitarian warfare paradigm.
They do not understand the African Union "peacekeeping mission in Darfur, just as they fail to even mildly conceive the deracinating effects of massive foreign "AID" enterprises, the involvement of intelligence services in these. They circumnavigate any substantive discussion of
the current involvement of the SPLA, LRA, UPDF.
The authors are armchair analysts who are smart, caring, ambitious -- capable thinkers and writers -- but who nonetheless contribute mostly noise to the deafening roar of propaganda re: Africa. They have no experience on the ground, especially in that region, and like Dr. Eric Reeves, and most Western spectator news consumers, they get all their information from others or directly from the propaganda system.
Anyone can create a blog and generate perpetual noise and thus gain a following. But let's at least be honest about what we do and do not understand and, more important, the power of our whiteness and how we displace, marginalize and silence deeper voices in our foolishness.
Is it a sign of racial thing or the training given for noble cause.. Its difficult to understand why they mysteriously appear and disappear.
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