Apocalypse in Central Africa
The Pentagon, Genocide and the War on Terror
20 July 2010
keith harmon snow
Published (edited extensively) by:
Z Magazine, July 2010 under the title:
BRUTAL REGIMES:
Apocalypse in Central Africa:
Ongoing repression, war crimes, and U.S. involvement
The Pentagon, Genocide and the War on Terror
20 July 2010
keith harmon snow
Published (edited extensively) by:
Z Magazine, July 2010 under the title:
BRUTAL REGIMES:
Apocalypse in Central Africa:
Ongoing repression, war crimes, and U.S. involvement
*
"As a key partner, we are very happy to be working with the Rwandan Defense Force as they seek to improve their capacity to do various peacekeeping missions as well as contribute in other ways to bringing peace to this region. And what we're doing as a part of this visit is demonstrating to our Rwandan friends that we indeed are a committed partner... And by so doing, that stability is felt around the world..."
General William E. Ward, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM)
Press conference, Kigali, Rwanda, 22 April 2010
Rwandan Defense Minister Gen. James Kabarebe (R)---indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Central Africa---speaks to US AFRICOM chief General William Ward, on a recent visit in Rwanda, July 2010. (Photo credit AFRICOM.)
The U.S. "War on Terror" destabilizes popular governments, communities, and indigenous societies all over the globe. This has occurred more than anywhere else in the Great Lakes region of Africa, where people face absolute terrorism and grotesque atrocities--the complete destruction of everything they know--a.k.a. genocide.
But genocide in Congo is off the agenda, in keeping with the prerogatives of private profit, western big business, white supremacy, and the politics of genocide.[0]
The U.S. has for years intervened in the region--U.S. multinational Union Carbide, for example, was in control of the SOMIKIVU mines in the Congo's Kivu provinces in the early 1960's--but through an expanding military partnership with key agents in Central Africa since 1980, the U.S. interventions have produced an unprecedented loss of life facilitated by direct U.S. government polices, covert military operations and guerrilla warfare, all cloaked in euphemisms of "peacekeeping," "humanitarianism" and "development."
Now Rwanda and Uganda (Ethiopia right behind them) have become the Pentagon's primary bases of operations in Africa, from which scores of millions of dollars of military hardware and Pentagon-trained African proxy warriors are routed into Congo and Burundi, but also far beyond these to the Pentagon's theaters of operation in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia--even to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Haiti.
MASSIVE UNPRECEDENTED SILENCE
The United States has a long history of supporting brutal regimes. The western mass media system provides cover stories and blankets the truth with propaganda campaigns--a business area formally known as "perception management"--devised by corporate nationalist foundation think tanks like the Center for American Progress, the Atlantic Council and the Council on Foreign Relations.
General Augusto Pinochet came to power in a coup d'etat on the other September 11 in 1973. The United States backed Pinochet's reign of terror in Chile and other perpetrators of mass atrocities in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, Bolivia, and El Salvador. In the 1980's mainstream western photographers images of decapitated and dismembered bodies strewn across the verdant land were rarely published by the establishment press. "Disappearing" as a terror tactic became routine--a product of western military 'training' from the School of the Americas. The people on the ground resisted, even as entire generations of families and whole communities were obliterated. Perpetrators were known but rarely held accountable; General Augusto Pinochet died in 2006, with 300 Chilean charges and several international war crimes charges against him.
The same story has unfolded in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but methods of information control and perception management have been refined. People in Canada, Europe, and the United States are so misinformed that they contribute to deceptive do-gooder campaigns launched by big government contractors masquerading as charities, like Save the Children and CARE International, or other so-called non-profit organizations whose main business is really propaganda, like the ENOUGH Project--funded by the Center for American Progress. But tax dollars are supporting brutal regimes committing the atrocities and causing the suffering people make donations for.
Fancy brochures and PR leaflets -- funded by the Center for American Progress--are distributed by ENOUGH at CAP-funded events and CAP-funded college chapters.
The media don't report the massacres, decapitations, dismemberments, and routine disappearances in Congo, and if they do the violence is attributed to African savagery, rather than terrorism as a military instruction (counter-insurgency, tactical operations, invasions and psychological operations) taught at the School of the Americas at Fort Bragg (GA) or at Fort Leavenworth (KA). The western news consumer has been sensitized to the mass rape occurring in eastern Congo, a cause that inspires hugely successful fundraising, like that of Eve Ensler's United Nations-backed V-Day Campaign, or for Ben Affleck's "humanitarian" charity in eastern Congo, but the narrative and discourse on rape blames the victims and shields or rewards the perpetrators. The western psyche is inculcated with racist stereotypes about savagery, disease, and the abject poverty and hopelessness of Africa--as if you and I and other westerners have nothing at all to do with the poverty, starvation, sexual atrocities, or genocide. The public does not hear about the western interests involved, the mining companies behind the systematic rape, or Ben Affleck's business ties to the regime in Rwanda--the military regime that occupies and terrorizes areas in Congo where Affleck's 'humanitarian' project operates.
Pinochet's reign of terror in Chile pales in comparison to the scale and nature of atrocities committed by the western proxies in Central Africa today. Topping the list of the Pentagon's agents of repression are Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni and his brother-in-law General Salim Saleh; Rwanda's president Paul Kagame and generals James Kabarebe and Karake Karenzi; and Congo's president Hypolite Kanambe (alias Joseph Kabila) and General John Numbi.
The contemporary apocalypse in Central Africa began with the guerrilla war led by Yoweri Museveni, 1980-1985, where Paul Kagame was Director of Military Intelligence; Kagame is known for perpetrating massacres and for torturing people at intelligence 'safe houses' in Uganda. Due to Kagame and Museveni, Uganda's Acholi people have been suffering a simmering genocide, hidden from the world, in northern Uganda. The Kagame-Museveni guerrilla warfare in Uganda (1980-1985) set a course that determined the fate of millions of innocent people in Central Africa where the death toll continues to mount.
"A central demand of the people of the Congo is justice," says Maurice Carney, director of Friends of the Congo. "Grotesque crimes have been committed--fueled by the looting of Congo's riches by a multitude of multinational corporations and U.S. and British allies Rwanda and Uganda. Unfortunately, most humanitarian and advocacy organizations in Washington have failed to demand that the US hold its allies and corporations accountable, in spite of existing US law that call for such accountability."
BLAME THE VICTIMS, REWARD THE KILLERS
In October 1990, the Ugandan army and the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army (RPF) led by Major General Paul Kagame invaded Rwanda. The guerrillas who violated international laws and committed massive war crimes were backed by Britain, Belgium, the United States and Israel. They were Ugandans. They were not the victims and they were not--as depicted by Philip Gourevitch in The New Yorker--"a stateless people" and "The Jews of Africa": they were Tutsi elites, extremists bent on recovering power and domination, who had attacked Rwanda repeatedly over the decades since their overthrow in 1959. By July 1994, the RPF completed its coup d'etatand consolidated its power in Rwanda. The government of Paul Kagame has since then maintained political power and manipulated public sympathy by promoting a highly politicized ideology of genocide.
New York Times' propaganda about 'genocide in Rwanda' like "Ugly Reality in Rwanda", produced May 9, 1994, by James C McKinley Jr. -- with reality further psychologically obliterated by advertisements using subliminal sexuality -- obscured the truth and set the stage for the massive psychological operation that today blinds westerners to the reality of the Pentagon's involvement in Central Africa.
After more than 18 years of systematic disinformation about Rwanda there exists a collective ignorance about what really happened and who is responsible. The so-called "Rwanda Genocide" is one of the most widely misunderstood events in contemporary history, and not because the evidence is lacking or because the truth is obscured by butchery, but because this was a psychological operation or PSYOP meant to obscure the reality of western military and corporate backed genocide. [1]
According to the official story, extremist Hutus in the government and military committed an orchestrated and pre-planned genocide against the Tutsi minority from April 6 to about July 16, 1994. In this mythology, some 800,000 to 1.2 million Tutsi were butchered over the now infamous "100 days of genocide" with hoes, axes, and machetes.
Anyone who challenges the official story is branded a 'genocide negationist' or 'genocide revisionist' by the Kagame regime, and they are castigated as 'killers of remembrance'. [2] Rwanda passed a formal law on 'genocide ideology' that prevents anyone from questioning the official historical record and criminalizing all ideas that might provoke ethnic division. Under the law, children below the age of 12 will be sent to a rehabilitation center for a year if found guilty, but Rwanda has shipped hundreds or thousands of people to 'reeducation camps'--one of these exists on remote and deserted Iwawa Island in Lake Kivu; internees are guarded by soldiers.[3]
In reality, the RPF were the preponderant killers, most victims were Hutus, and the numbers of dead during those 100 days were far less. The final insult to truth comes in the upside-down assertion that the RPF "stopped the genocide by winning the war." Also, the RPF typically killed everyone in its path: Kagame did not trust any Tutsis who stayed in Rwanda after pogroms that created the Tutsi exile community prior to the Habyarimana government (1973-1994) and so Tutsis were also targeted by the RPF. Under the new power structure there were strong motivations to accuse the stigmatized Hutus of crimes that were never committed--the access and control of land. It is the same in Uganda and Congo.
On April 6, 1994, the governments of Rwanda and Burundi were decapitated when the plane carrying the two presidents and top military staff was shot down over Kigali, Rwanda's capital. The well-planned assassinations of Juvenal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira sparked a massive escalation of warfare that is falsely portrayed as the result of meaningless tribal savagery. These assassinations were major war crimes, and the RPF and UPDF were responsible, but almost every attempt to honestly investigate the double presidential assassinations has been blocked by the U.S. and its allies.
On November 17, 2006, French anti-terrorist judge Jean-Louis Bruguière issued international war crimes indictments after concluding that the RPF, under the direct orders of Paul Kagame, carried out the surface-to air-missile attacks on the airplane carrying the two presidents.[4]
On February 6, 2008, a Spanish court delivered international arrest warrants against forty of the top military officials in the Rwandan regime. President Paul Kagame was not indicted only because heads of state have immunity. The RPF officials are charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1990 and 2002.[5]
Of course, Kagame's propagandists have produced extensive documentation that falsifies the truth about Habyarimana and Ntaryamira's murders and the violence by the RPF; Philip Gourevitch and The New Yorkerlauded the pro-Kagame whitewash before the ink had dried (see: Philip Gourevitch, "The Mutsinzi Report on the Rwandan Genocide," The New Yorker, January 8, 2010). Establishment and intelligence agency venues purporting to provide balanced, independent and honest news, like AllAfrica.com, support the distortions by publishing the public relations productions of the Kagame regime verbatim and censoring penetrating rebuttals. [6]
Rwandan General Karake Karenzi, indicted by the court in Spain, was nonetheless contracted as the deputy force commander for the African Union-U.N. Mission in Darfur, another 'peacekeeping' euphemism for the Pentagon-NATO proxy war targeting Sudan's Islamic government of Omar al Bashir. The U.N. urged the Rwandan government to replace Karenzi after the Spanish indictments, but the UN reversed itself after Kagame threatened withdrawal of the 3000 Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF=former RPF) troops from Darfur.
'Save Darfur' propaganda generated by nationalist US think tanks and the western media obscures the involvement of the Pentagon, Britain, Belgium, Canada and Israel, and of intelligence operatives like Roger Winter and David Kimche, and the Darfur 'genocide' discourse mirrors the psychological operations used against the western news consuming public to create the false narrative about genocide in Rwanda.
Using international legal instruments like the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) and now the International Criminal Court, western governments-- the U.S., U.K., Belgium, Canada, Britain and Israel in particular--actively assist the Kagame regime in hunting refugees and critics, because these governments backed the Rwanda Patriotic Front's guerrilla war, 1990-1994, and the years of terrorism that have followed, 1994-2010.
The U.S. Department of State annual Human Rights Country Report on Rwanda and Uganda is always a complete fiction, yet these reports are presented as indisputable truth in Rwandan refugee asylum hearings in the United States.
Eastern Congo's north and south Kivu provinces are occupied and controlled by criminal networks from Rwanda and Uganda. [7] In DRC, there are countless cites of atrocities committed by the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front (RPF) and Ugandan People's Defense Forces (UPDF) as they marched across Zaire (DRC), calling themselves the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Zaire/Congo (ADFL), and slaughtered perhaps as many as 600,000 unarmed refugees, 1996-1997, mostly women and children under 15 years old.[8]
"There is a group of militaristic U.S. African 'experts' in the Pentagon and State Department," wrote intelligence insider Wayne Madsen, "and in-waiting at pro-Hillary Clinton think tanks like the Center for American Progress (CAP). Ironically, these 'experts' are mostly women and they include current Assistant US Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs Theresa Whalen, and Bill Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Susan Rice, who is currently with CAP.
"AFRICOM commander, US Army General William E. "Kip" Ward, will be assisted by military and State Department Foreign Service deputies. As with the top militaristic foreign policy 'expert' in the Bush administration, Frazer, an African American, the selection of Ward, also an African American, is a shameless attempt by the Bush administration to mask the true intent of AFRICOM among Africa's black population."
THE RWANDA HIT LIST
On February 24, 2010 a communiqué circulated on the Internet, written in Kinyarwanda, that purportedly outlined directives from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Communications (MINAFFET) Rwanda Ambassadors and High Commissioners Annual Retreat, held in Rwanda, on 17-18 February 2010. The document appeared coincident with the late February defection and flight of Rwanda's ambassadors to Holland and India. This leaked document exemplifies the regime's modus operandi on public and international relations and it called for the neutralization of Rwanda's enemies at home and abroad (including this author).
They were given a report from the Intelligence Services revealing the enemies of the country who should be fought by all means possible and if necessary by assassination. The following are names of foreigners and organizations that need to be fought urgently.
Foreigners to target: Robin Philpot [9]; C. Peter Erlinder [10]; Keith Harmon Snow; Jordi Palou-Loverdos [11]; Peter Verlinden; Pierre Péan [12]; Charles Onana [13]; Filip Reyntjens [14]; Luc de Temmerman [15].
Also target Rwandan refugees representing the FDLR [Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Congo] in Africa; Europe; America; and elsewhere.[16]
While we are led to believe that the perpetrators of violence in Rwanda and Congo are those nastygenocidaires, the extremist Hutus, their Interahamwe militias, the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) in Congo, and other undesirables, the primary responsible perpetrators are always protected, because they are the agents of western powers.
Any person who has sought asylum from or in any way annoyed the Rwanda government will be persecuted today. Rwandans inside and outside Rwanda are accused of 'genocide' or 'complicity in genocide' through fabricated evidence, coerced testimonies, bribery, and petty jealousies. There is no possibility of any kind of fair trial procedure in Rwanda and no possibility of freely investigating facts, or identifying and securing witnesses.
The New York Times reportage, "Rwanda's Huge Stake in Congo's War" (Ian Fisher, 27 December 1998) was nothing more than damage control that finally revealed what everyone had known since September of 1996: Rwanda (RPF) and Uganda (UPDF) were waging war in Zaire (Congo). However the entire context of US military involvement in planning, logistics and operations of the RPF/UPDF invasion of Zaire (Congo), 1996-1998, was missing and, as always, there was no mention of western multinational corporate interests. (At bottom, part of the insidious propaganda campaign on HIV/AIDS in Africa.)
The one-party regime controlled by Paul Kagame projects a shiny veneer of tourism, development and 'entrepreneurism', but submerged barely under the surface of this veneer there exists a climate of absolute terror and there are profound ethnic divisions leading towards war. We saw the same situation with Chile under Pinochet. We are beginning to see this more openly with the approach of the 2010 elections.[17]
Rwanda and Uganda are run by secretive criminal military organizations[18] in parallel with formal government structures, responsible for the systematic and intentional deaths of far more than 10 million people since 1980, just counting in Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo, to the present.[19]
The label 'Interahamwe' has come to stand for 'extremist murderous Hutu militias' and is usually translated from Kinyarwanda to mean "those who attack together." Yet President Paul Kagame and the RPF military-intelligence apparatus applies this terminology to mean "anyone who is in opposition to the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front movement, its government, or its elite clandestine networks," and in the case of Paul Kagame, even to "anyone I don't like." The labels 'Interahamwe' and genocidaire are used to dehumanize all Hutu people everywhere (just as Jews were dehumanized in Germany prior to and during World War II).[20] This has created the political, social and economic conditions for the perpetration of genocide by the RPF government, and its collaborators, and this dehumanization has been perpetuated through the international mass media, human rights institutions, think tanks, non-government organizations, "peace" organizations and foreign governments everywhere.
This is one of the greatest globalized war crimes in human history.
Even Tutsis--presented as the only victims and only genocide survivors--have been persecuted by the victorious RPF Tutsi regime in Rwanda. It cannot be denied that hundreds of thousands of Tutsis were killed in Rwanda, especially if we confine our discussion to the 100 days of genocide from April 6 to July 1994. However, the RPF regime also killed many Tutsis, because this elite Tutsi rebel force did not trust Tutsis who stayed in Rwanda after President Juvenal Habyarimana's coup in 1973.
The current regime is responsible for massive bloodshed against all ethnic groups in Rwanda, and the façade is supported internationally due to the economic, political and military interests at stake.[21] The International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) also supported the façade, as confirmed by Carla Del Ponte, the former Chief Prosecutor of the ICTR, in her memoirs.[22]
People accused of 'genocide' in Rwanda have been brought before the so-called 'community-based' Gacaca tribunals repeatedly, compelled by the Rwandan regime to revisit their cases until a guilty verdict is established; many innocent civilians have been tried and retried until they were found guilty.[23]
In December 2008, the Trial Chamber-1 at the ICTR acquitted the four highest-ranking senior military officers of the former government army, the Forces Armee Rwandaise (ex-FAR)--the supposed "masterminds"--of conspiracy to commit genocide.[24] More acquittals were delivered in November 2009, following seven years of trial at the ICTR, where the court found that the Prosecutor's evidence was explained by normal military planning in the course of the four year Rwandan civil war (1990-1994).
Today, anyone who remotely steps out of line inside Rwanda will immediately be targeted, accused of genocide revisionism, negationism or participation in "the genocide" itself. Kagame's elite terrorist network also whitewashes its crimes through its affiliation with Dr. Paul Farmer and Farmer's Clinton-funded charity Partners in Health, also involved in Haiti (the impetus for Rwandan paramilitary forces sent to Haiti after the earthquake).
The latest high-profile victims of Kagame's criminal regime include Victoire Ingabire, a Hutu woman who returned to Rwanda from exile in Belgium in January to contest the upcoming presidential elections. Ingabire made a public speech on arrival addressing the suppressed debate about genocide in Rwanda and the mass killing of Hutus. She was immediately arrested and continues to be persecuted by the regime and charged with thought- and speech-crimes like "genocide ideology".
Also targeted is Prof. Peter Erlinder, an International Human Rights and Civil Rights Attorney and a Professor of Law at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota and the former lead defense counsel at the ICTR. Erlinder traveled to Rwanda's capital, Kigali, on May 23, to join the defense team of Rwandan presidential candidate Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza and was arrested on charges of "genocide denial." Erlinder was at first denied bail, but intense pressure for lawyers and citizens led to his release on bail on grounds of 'medical compassion'. Peter Erlinder faces up to 25 years in prison--the ludicrous conviction for 'genocide denial' is 25 years in prison or pay a $1,700 fine!--and the regime in Rwanda intends to prosecute him. The U.S. government took a scandalous position of inaction during Erlinder's incarceration, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put in the inconvenient (sic) position of having to answer questions about Erlinder's case while defending a murderous regime that the Clinton's unwaveringly supported.
WHEN VICTIMS BECOME KILLERS
In mid-November 2009 Dem. Rep. of Congo (DRC) president Hypolite Kanambe secretly airlifted a battalion of Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF)[25] across Congo to crush a new rebellion in the Equateur province of western Congo; the operation was supported by MONUC and AFRICOM. The RDF forces were uniformed as Armed Forces of the Dem. Rep. of Congo (FARDC). Along with RDF regulars, MONUC troops from the international "peacekeeping" mission have been fighting alongside Tutsi Rwandan soldiers infiltrated by Rwanda, with the Hypolite Kanambe (DRC) government's support, into Congo's national army, the FARDC.
The Tutsi forces in the FARDC include infiltrated Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF, formerly Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army) and "ex-" CNDP forces from the National Congress for the Defense of the People, the extremist terrorist militia that sprouted out of the Kivu Provinces, originally led by Rwandan war criminal General Laurent Nkunda. The CNDP is backed by Rwanda and infiltrated with thousands of extremist Tutsis. MONUC, Belgium and AFRICOM have collaborated with Rwanda and CNDP forces in committing massive war crimes in the western Congo "Dongo crises".[26]
Congolese civilians displaced by Rwandan and Ugandan military operations suffer egregious atrocities and are effectively condemned to death by the policies of the 'international community' in league with Paul Kagame, Yoweri Museveni and Hypolite Kanambe (alias Joseph Kabila)--and in league with the United Nations Mission in Congo (MONUC).
Thousands of CNDP militia forces were integrated into the FARDC military in 2009 in a strategic maneuver championed by Rwandan general James Kabarebe and Paul Kagame and their western backers. The CNDP is one of the pivotal causes of the massive destabilization of Eastern Congo.
CNDP aligned forces and Rwandan troops have launched a new "rebellion" called "CNDP-Reformed" and they are perpetrating a scorched earth campaign across eastern Congo today. [27].
In the Lubero and Beni areas of North Kivu province, where a targeted genocide is underway against Congolese by Ugandan and Rwandan elements, the western oil companies Dominion Energy and SOCO International are moving in to the Lake Edward Albertine Basin to sink new oil wells; the local communities have not been consulted or informed, and are subject to ongoing pacification backed by AFRICOM. SOCO International's board of directors includes former president of the United Nations Security Council Antonio Monteiro. Dominion and SOCO have secured (sic) 'presidential decrees' from Hypolite Kanambe to operate in Lake Edward, all with the support of Uganda's Museveni, Rwanda's Kagame, and AFRICOM. Western 'journalists' like Africa-based Michael J. Kavanagh, with the assistance of his employer, Bloomberg News, have whitewashed western involvement--instead employing themes of tribalism and ethnic conflict--and downplayed the atrocities; Kavanagh routinely cites the disinformation sources, especially intelligence insider John Prendergast, the ENOUGH front group, and the International Rescue Committee.
AFRICOM and MONUC are heavily supportive of CNDP and RDF criminal activities, land grabbing and genocide against Congolese, just as the Pentagon and United Nations supported genocide--no matter who you accuse as killers or who you count as victims--in Rwanda. Ditto for the Ugandan People's Defense Forces, partnered with AFRICOM under the new Lord's Resistance Army Disarmament Act, and are responsible for massive atrocities in northern Uganda, south Sudan and northeastern Congo.
Recent reports from South Kivu human rights groups have documented Canadian mining company BANRO Gold's links to local terrorism, yet not one mainstream western media source has reported or even named the involvement of pivotal western mining interests--including BANRO, Moto Gold, Mwana Africa, Heritage Oil & Gas--behind the war and plunder in blood-drenched eastern Congo. Moto Gold director Walter Kansteiner was National Security Council under William Jefferson Clinton.
Rwandan war criminals like General Laurent Nkunda and General Bosco Ntaganda are responsible for massive war crimes, with the blessing of Hypolite Kanambe and Paul Kagame, pursuing the western agenda of balkanizing the Congo and creating a "Republic of the Volcanoes" (Republique des Volcans) as Clinton-Bush official Herman Cohen has repeatedly called for since the U.S.-backed invasions of the 1990's.
Herman Cohen was former Ambassador to Zaire and official under G. H. W. Bush, and Cohen's consulting firm Cohen & Woods counts amongst its lucrative clients a company called Contour Global Corporation (NY), now partnered with the Kagame regime to exploit the deadly methane in deep water under Lake Kivu on Congo and Rwanda's border (another oil industry disaster in the making).
The Congolese people have been subject to egregious injustices committed by the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC). Similarly, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR I & II) supported western interests and helped secure the military conquest of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF).
ASSASSINATIONS AND RAPE
The current death toll in the eastern provinces of Congo alone stands at some 1500 people per day, with at least ten million dead in Congo since the U.S. invasion of 1996, with millions of refugees in the Great Lakes member states. Rwandan allied forces in DRC are perpetrating genocide at present in the Kivus, particularly in the lucrative mining areas, and the western media and "humanitarian" agencies are silent.
John Numbi, formerly the head of FARDC Air Forces and now inspector general of the Police National Congolaise (CNP) is reported to be Hypolite Kanambe's (alias Kabila) main link to Rwandan military officials Paul Kagame and James Kabarebe. Numbi is a regular visitor to Kigali and described as "one of Congo's most dangerous men." Numbi is responsible for mass graves in eastern Congo that the United Nations will not investigate.[28]
The most recent United Nations Group of Experts Report also cited direct Congolese National Police (under Numbi) involvement in contraband activities involving Rwandan Defense Forces in Eastern Congo.[29] John Numbi also coordinated military operations in January 2009 that resulted in massive war crimes and crimes against humanity against Congolese people in the Kivus.[30]
On June 2, 2010, Floribert Chebeya Bahizire, the Congo's leading human rights defender, was assassinated after being summoned to meet with John Numbi. Bahizire, founder of the Congolese human rights organization Voix des Sans Voix (Voice of the Voiceless), criticized the human rights abuses of the regimes of President Mobutu Sese Seko, Laurent Désirée Kabila, and Hypolite Kanambe (alias Joseph Kabila).[31] Security forces arrested, detained and threatened Bahizire repeatedly over the past two decades. In March Bahizire gave an interview to a newspaper where he deplored the "international community" for turning its back on Congolese human rights associations; in May 2010 he was forced by police to kneel at gunpoint.
Bahizire was assassinated for instituting a Voice of the Voiceless lawsuit in Belgian court against John Numbi and the Kanambe (DRC) government for a massacre in Bas Congo province against a political and religious group named Bundu dia Kongo earlier this year. According to intelligence insiders in Kinshasa, the operation to eliminate Bahizire was run by the Internal Security branch of the ANR--National Intelligence Agency (like U.S. CIA)--headed by Kalev Mutond, "a real killer" and "the man who does Joseph Kabila's [Hypolite Kanambe's] dirty work," but John Numbi was also involved.
Logging concessions doled out by the Hypolite Kanambe (alias Joseph Kabila) regime in Kinshasa, Dem. Rep. of Congo belong to US, European and Canadian companies. This map shows concessions in the Kisangani area, where AFRICOM is building its base, owned by westerners, including those owned by the contractor working with AFRICOM on US military base construction near Kisangani.
One of the latest pro-RPF vigilante refugee hunters on the Rwanda 'genocidaire' trail is Jason Stearns, a former U.N. (MONUC) and International Crises Group 'analyst'. Stearns also worked on several U.N. panels of experts on the illegal exploitation in the DR Congo, including the U.N. 'experts' report of November 2009, which launched a smear campaign against Fundacio S'Olivar and Inshuti, Spanish charities affiliated with Juan Carrero Seralegui and Jordi Palou-Loverdos (named on Rwanda's 'Hit List' above) accusing them of backing terrorists in Congo. This is the U.N.'s failed attempt to discredit the Spanish indictments against the RPF. [32],[33]
For years now several high visibility Western intelligence organizations, in particular the groups ENOUGH, STAND, Genocide Intervention Network, and the RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO, and their wealthy backers the International Crisis Group and Center for American Progress, have lobbied college students and Western governments to action, always pushing for legislation, including the new "Conflict Minerals" bill, and licensed by the major mass media to speak as the only bona fide experts on the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and Uganda. Recent of pending legislation backed by these intelligence fronts includes the "LRA Disarmament Act" (Lord's Resistance Army), the so-called 'Blood Minerals' legislation, and the "Violence Against Women Act" (Resolution 1888). The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) is blamed for all terrorism in the northern Uganda region (which is awash in oil and gold) thus shielding the organized war crimes of Ugandan President Museveni and his western allies, just as the FDLR is unanimously targeted to shield the Kagame terror networks.
William Jefferson Clinton's former national security insider John Prendergast is the leading cheerleader for these groups, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's help, and with John Podesta, Tom Daschle and Madeleine Albright, behind the scenes. John Prendergast was the expert of choice for CBS 60 Minutes' "Blood Minerals" broadcast, nationally televised in the United States on Nov. 29, 2009, which was an advertisement for ENOUGH, the International Rescue Committee and so-called "humanitarian" organizations. These lobby and flak entities are working to displace and neutralize all true international grassroots efforts to help the Congolese people take control of their own resources and future, and they cover for hidden Western interests; they also advance military solutions over diplomatic or other peaceful solutions.
The Western media perpetually broadcasts the suffering in Congo, but the propaganda is simplistic disinformation, and the Western "news"-consuming public eats it up and dismisses the Congo, abandoning the people whose lives are determined in part by the raw materials stolen from them in a state of war and organized crime. These include diamonds, gold, columbium-tantalite (coltan), cobalt, copper, petroleum, germanium, niobium, tin, tungsten, palm oil, coffee and chocolate (sold in Whole Foods groceries stores). Beyond the value the above resources combined, the biggest western moneymaker in Congo is humanitarian 'aid' and international 'charity'--a.k.a., and the misery industry. [34]
A testimonial to the true mission of UN 'peacekeeping', Congolese from across the country cite conditions all over Congo as worse than at any time in the past 20 years, with increasing insecurity and violence.
In Mid-March, at an exclusive United States Institute for Peace meeting in Washington, DC, AFRICOM spokesman Mark Swayne dismissed AFRICOM involvement in covert operations in Congo. The USIP has funded pro-Kagame disinformation campaigns since the early 1990's, shielding U.S. involvement in Central African war crimes and genocide. AFRICOM information campaigns exclusively project an image of U.S. troops being only involved in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations. Swayne reportedly 'apologized' for AFRICOM's use of Ugandans in building the new AFRICOM base under construction in Kisangani, Congo.
Military communications and intelligence facilities in Kampala, Uganda -- a major base of Pentagon operations, involve US and UK corporations and the intelligence sectors from western countries.
Uganda's organized crime networks and the Ugandan military are hated for their plunder and terror in Congo. The Pentagon's own web site identifies the elite U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as 'training' Congolese troops in Kisangani, DRC, and Swayne did not reveal that the Ugandans are mercenaries likely affiliated to the western mercenary-linked oil companies (Heritage Oil & Gas, Hardmann Resources, H Oil Company) operating in the Lake Albert basin on the DRC-Uganda border.
One European expatriate who was a direct witness to RPF war crimes and the massacres of scores of thousands of Hutu civilians in Kisangani, Zaire (1996-1997),[35] under the eye of USAID, World Food Program, UNHCR and other officials, [36] 'won' a major construction contract for the new AFRICOM base in Kisangani; construction involves Ugandan, Rwandan and Tanzanian mercenary forces and U.S. military and intelligence personnel have overrun one local hotel.[37] MONUC insiders in Kinshasa confirm that U.S. military personnel are operating inside the MONUC peacekeeping (sic) mission in the G-2 division of MONUC military intelligence at MONUC headquarters in Kinshasa. There is also a Pentagon military intelligence 'fusion cell', tasked with overseeing strategic minerals plunder (essential for U.S. military stockpiles), operating covertly in northeastern Congo (Kisangani) and run by an "ex" marine named "Tom", two other U.S. military personnel, and Rwandan troops.
The MONUC "peacekeeping" enterprise in Congo is a $1 billion a year operation involving contracts with PAE (Pacific Architect & Engineers, a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin). AFRICOM, NATO and private military companies Dyncorp and PAE have also been training and flying Ugandan and Rwandan troops to the U.S.-European-Israeli wars in Somalia and Sudan (Darfur).
There are at least 300 Ugandans backing the US in Afghanistan and more than 10,000 Ugandans in Iraq, with more than 3000 Rwandans in Darfur and 2000 or more Ugandans in Somalia. An unknown number of Rwandan soldiers are also in Iraq and Afghanistan, and there are allegations that "peacekeeping" sorties sent to Darfur, Sudan, may actually serve as cover for military personnel and hardware actually bound from Rwanda/Uganda to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are allegations that some Rwandan forces serving in the Pentagon's overseas war theatres are forcibly conscripted for the under threat of "genocide" accusations, trials or retrials, and lengthy prison terms at home. Ugandan troops have been subject to slavery conditions and sexual assaults in Iraq.[38]
While the debate about 'genocide in Rwanda' is heating up slightly, [39] almost no one pays any attention to the increasing numbers of assassinations and illegal arrests committed by the Kagame regime. In late June 2010 a Rwandan woman and true genocide survivor was arrested in New Hampshire (USA), charged with fraudulent genocide violations fabricated by the Kagame regime, and backed by the Department of Homeland Security.[40] On July 14, 2010, Jwani Mwaikusa, an International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda (ICTR) lawyer and University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) Law Professor, was gunned down outside his home in Tanzania--a clear hit by the Kagame regime.[41]
This New York Times Congo reportage "War Claims Fly in Congo, But What's Their Basis?" of August 12, 1997, is a tongue-in-cheek whitewash by Howard W. French, who was well aware of western corporate interests in Congo at the time.[45] For example, French knew of Maurice Tempelsman's diamond interests, and Banro Corporation threats against President Laurent Kabila. (Tempelsman diamonds are sold under the TIFFANY brand, advertised here with more subliminal sexuality by SAKS.)
On July 16, 2010, public protests against Paul Kagame's presence in Spain led to Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodrigez Zapatero canceling his meeting with visiting war criminal Paul Kagame. Meanwhile, more and more legitimate Rwandan refugees, dissidents, intellectuals and others who do not support the pro-Kagame terror apparatus have been arrested overseas as the Kagame regime increases pressure on foreign governments. The RPF regime's public relations and western lobbyists organized a major conference in the USA on 20 July 2010, sponsored by the Atlantic Council, a right-wing US nationalist think-tank. The event, titled "Democracy and Genocide Denial Politics", is designed to provide the RPF apologists an opportunity to proactively defend the regime and further attempt to criminalize anyone who questions the RPF's one-sided genocide mythology, and to give the disingenuous western press some up-to-date 'spot news' on Rwanda to splash across the New York Times, Washington Post, National Public Radio and other pro-U.S. government, pro-corporate propaganda venues.[42]
Israel's ties to bloodshed and plunder (a.k.a. weapons sales, blood diamonds,. cobalt mining) in Central Africa run deep but hidden. Israeli Mossad agent David Kimche (d. March 8, 2010) is believed to have been one of the primary agents behind the 'genocide in Rwanda', but because he was aligned with Kagame and the RPF, along with U.S. intelligence operative Roger Winter, we only hear such names when they are receiving awards from Kagame: on July 5, 2010, Roger Winter received an award in Kigali, along with U.S. Congressman Donald Payne--Chair of the U.S. Congress Africa Committee--and Colin Keating, former Prime Minister of New Zealand (who did not attend), and others. Meanwhile, U.S. aerospace and defense contractor Northrup Grumman continues to 'train' Rwanda's military. [43]
On July 14, 2010, the First Vice President of the Democratic Green Party of Rwanda, Andre Kagwa Rwisereka, was found dead, his head almost completely severed from his body, in the wetlands of the Makula River near Butare, Rwanda--another clear Kagame regime hit. [44]
The killing in Central Africa and the Horn continues, and along with the bloodshed come the shameless western apologies by academics, media pundits, think tanks and mainstream personalities, all with the aim of whitewashing the bloodbaths organized and committed by US client regimes in Rwanda and Uganda, with support of the US-backed regime in Kinshasa (DRC), and armed, trained, and funded by AFRICOM, with U.S. military on the ground in the region, and United Nations complicity.
[0] See, e.g., Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, The Politics of Genocide, Monthly Review Press, 2010.
[1] See, e.g., Davenport and Stam, "What Really Happened in Rwanda?" Miller-McCune, Oct. 6, 2009, http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture_society/what-really-happened-in-rwanda-1504.
[2] See, e.g., Keith Harmon Snow, "The Rwanda Genocide Fabrications," Dissident Voice, April 13, 2009,http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/the-rwanda-genocide-fabrications/.
[5] See, e.g., Spain's Feb. 6, 2008, indictments issued by High Court Judge Fernando Andreu charging 40 current or former high-ranking Rwandan military officials with serious crimes, including genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and terrorism, perpetrated over a period of 12 years, from 1990 to 2002, against the civilian population and primarily against members of the Hutu ethnic group.
[7] See, e.g.: keith harmon snow: "Three Cheers for Eve Ensler?" ZNet, October 24, 2007; "Merchant's of Death: Exposing Corporate Financed Holocaust in Africa," Dissident Voice, December 8, 2008; "Over Five Million Dead in Congo? Fifteen hundred People Daily?" February 4, 2008.
[8] The ADFL (RPF + UPDF + U.S. & U.K. & Israel backing) war crimes and genocide against Rwandan and Burundian refugees is well documented. In August 1996 there were an estimated 1.5 million refugees in eastern Zaire, and by November the estimated 500,000 to 750,000 Rwandan refugees that did not return to Rwanda under the illegal forced repatriation became the targets of a systematic manhunt by ADFL forces. See, e.g., Roberto Garreton, Special Rapporteur of the U.N. Human Rights Commission, Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Zaire No. E/CN.4/1996/66, June 29, 1996; Howard French, A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa, Vintage Books, 2005; and Filip Reyntjens, The Great African War, Cambridge University Press, 2009; Gerard Prunier, Africa's World War, Oxford University Press, 2009, pp. 120-128; Wayne Madsen,Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Edwin Mellen Press, 1999; and International Non-governmental Commission of Inquiry into the Massive Violations of Human Rights Committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (Former Zaire) 1996-1997, Int'l Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, 1998; DRC: What Kabila is Hiding: Civilian Killings and Impunity in Congo, Human Rights Watch, Vol. 9, No. 5(A), October 1997.
[9] Robin Philpot, Ça ne s'est pas passé comme ça à Kigali, (That's Not What Happened in Kigali), published in English by the (Phil) Taylor Report: Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard, 2004, http://www.taylor-report.com/Rwanda_1994/.
[19] The question of mortality statistics by ethnic category have been addressed by Filip Reyntjens, Christian Davenport, Alan Stam and others, leading to the conclusion that the number of Hutu deaths in Rwanda during the so-called "100 days of genocide" of 1994 exceed the possible numbers of Tutsi deaths, a complete inversion of the claims by the Government of Rwanda, and its supporters and allies, who have always maintained some 800,000 to 1.2 million Tutsis killed in the "Rwanda genocide".
[24] Prosecutor v. Bagosora, 98-41-T, Judgment of 12/18/08, published in full February 9, 2009 (www.ictr.org).
[26] See: keith harmon snow, "AFRICOM Backs Bloodshed in Central Africa," Dissident Voice, April 10, 2010; Congo Rebellion Expanding, United Nations and Media Silent," Conscious Being Alliance (.com), January 14, 2010; and "Belgian Paratroopers to Crush Rising Congo Rebellion?" The African Executive, December 9-16, 2009, http://www.africanexecutive.com/modules/magazine/articles.php?article=4851&magazine=259.
[27] See, e.g., Jean-Piere Mbelu, "Entrée massive de l'armée rwandaise sur le territoire congolais," May 12, 2010,
http://fr.allafrica.com/stories/201005120255.html. See also: UN: Act to End Atrocities in Eastern Congo, Human Rights Watch, December 13, 2009.
[33] The latest 'Panel of Experts' report on Congo revealed the true pro-RPF bias of the United Nations, and discredited the report, which has some solid information in it about certain western criminals, such as, for example, Philippe de Moerloose, whom this author has previously cited for war crimes.
[39] See, e.g., Gerald Caplan, "The Politics of Denialism: The Strange Case of Rwanda," June 17, 2010, Pambazuka News; Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, "Genocide Denial and Genocide Facilitation: Gerald Caplan and the Politics of Genocide," Monthly Review, July 7, 2010; Gerald Caplan, "Rwanda: Sources and Testimonies--A Response to Herman and Peterson," AllAfrica.com, July 16, 2010; and Adam Jones, "Rwanda: On Genocide Deniers: Challenging Herman and Peterson," AllAfrica.com, 16 July 2010, http://allafrica.com/stories/201007161144.html .
[40] See: keith harmon snow, "U.S. Woman Falsely Accused of Rwanda Genocide Rape Crimes," Dissident Voice, June 29, 2010.
[41] See: Ann Garrison, "Defense Lawyers Condemn Assassination of ICTR Defense Lawyer Mwaikusa," San Francisco Bay View, July 17, 2010.
[42] "Democracy and Genocide Denial Politics in Rwanda," The Atlantic Council, http://www.acus.org/event/democracy-and-genocide-denial-politics-rwanda. On the Atlantic Council's board of directors are some of Kagame's chief U.S. supporters, and the agents of western interventions, including Madeleine Albright, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, James Baker, Frank Carlucci, Brent Scowcroft, Condoleeza Rice, Henry Kissinger, Richard Holbrooke, Warren Christopher, Thomas Pickering and Wesley Clark.
[43] "US Firm Wins Contract to Continue Training Rwandan Soldiers," Rwanda News Agency, July 6, 2010.
[44] Ann Garrison, "Rwanda Green Party Leader Assassinated," San Francisco Bay View, July 14, 2010.
[45] Howard W. French, "War Claims Fly in Congo, but What's Their Basis?" New York Times, August 12, 1998, http://partners.nytimes.com/library/world/africa/081398congo-rebellion.html.
Written by: keith harmon snow
Photography Credits: keith harmon snow
http://www.consciousbeingalliance.com/2010/07/apocalypse-in-central-africa-the-pentagon-genocide-and-the-war-on-terror/
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