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Saturday, 22 October 2011

THIRD WORLD TRAVELLER

U.S. Military and Corporate Recolonization of the Congo
by Ellen Ray
Covert Action Quarterly, Spring / Summer 2000



The United States' involvement in Congo since before independence from Belgium in June 1960 has been steady, sinister, and penetrating. Most notable was the ClA's role in the overthrow (September 1960) and later assassination (January 1961) of Congo's first Prime Minister, the charismatic (and socialist) Patrice Lumumba. The full extent of U.S. machinations was not known for years, but the failure at the time of the United Nations to protect Lumumba was patent. And questions continue to linger over the mysterious plane crash in September 1961 that killed U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold as he was flying to the border town of Ndola to meet with Moise Tshombe, president of the breakaway Katanga Province. The plane fell from the sky killing all aboard 2 Is it any wonder that in Congo today there is little trust of Washington or respect for the United Nations?

INTRODUCTION

In October 1996, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (ADFL), commanded by and composed mainly of Tutsi military forces from Paul Kagame's Rwanda Patriotic Army (RPA), along with Tutsi refugees from Zaire and some Congolese patriots, all under the titular leadership of Congolese exile Laurent Kabila, crossed into Zaire from Rwanda and Burundi. In May 1997, after only seven months of fighting, they had overthrown the 30-year dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko. While marching west across the vast expanse of the country, divisions of this army had wreaked terrible vengeance on the Rwandan Hutu exiles encamped since 1994 in eastern Zaire, where they had been driven from Rwanda by the RPA on the heels of the horrendous massacre of hundreds of thousands of Rwandan Tutsis, encouraged and supervised by extremists in the Hutu-dominated government.
In Kinshasa, with Kabila named President, key cabinet posts and the new Congo army and security forces were immediately staffed at the highest levels by Rwandan Tutsis.
By July 1998, Kabila realized that the Congolese people would not support the excesses of the Rwandan "foreigners" throughout their government. He also recognized the extent to which he had become a puppet of his Tutsi "allies," and after confirmed reports of atrocities by Tutsi military against Hutu exiles in the east, and later in the west of the country, had become too prevalent to ignore, and after he had uncovered an apparent Rwandan plot to assassinate him and stage a coup in Congo, Kabila ordered the Rwandans to leave.
Less than a week later, on August 2, 1998, Ugandan and Rwandan regular troops invaded Congo with regrouped, well-trained rebel forces, and began the war to overthrow Kabila that goes on to this day despite a shaky, much-violated, U.S.-supported cease-fire. Rwandans and Ugandans control most of the east of the country, and there has been a de facto partition, a gross violation of Congolese sovereignty
Yet Rwanda is a tiny impoverished nation, and Uganda is not much larger or richer, while Congo is one of the largest, richest, and most populous nations in Africa, which at one time had its most powerful army How did this happen? Could impoverished Rwanda and Uganda have orchestrated, armed, and financed such operations on their own?
Is it a coincidence that Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame was trained in the United States? That the Rwandan army received, and continues to receive, training in the U.S.? That the Pentagon has had Special Forces military training missions in Rwanda and Uganda for more than five years? That vast segments of the Congolese infrastructure, particularly the mining companies, have been taken over by U.S.- and western-linked multinationals, working with the Rwandan and Ugandan rebels and governments?

THE U.S. ROLE

The Mobutu era began with ardent U.S. support, financial and military. From 1965 to 1991, Zaire received more than $1.5 billion in U.S. economic and military aid. In

return, U.S. multinationals increased their share of the ownership of Zaire's fabulous mineral wealth. On the foreign policy front, Zaire was a bastion of anti-communism during the Cold War, in the center of a continent Washington saw as perilously close to Moscow's influence. As the State Department put it, "Zaire has been a stabilizing force and a staunch supporter of U.S. and western policies...." Mobutu's corruption and brutality were ignored for thirty years. It was only when the plunder of western-owned assets and the ruination of the country were nearly complete, when Mobutu's stolen billions had become a worldwide embarrassment, that the U.S. began to seek an acceptable change.
By this time, the U.S. was deeply involved in both Uganda and Rwanda, and very close to Paul Kagame. In 1990, Kagame, a Rwandan exile serving as a colonel in the Ugandan army was training at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, when he dropped out of the program and rushed back to Uganda to take command of the rebel army that invaded Rwanda.
After three years of civil war in Rwanda, a power-sharing peace accord was negotiated, only to collapse in 1994, when an airplane carrying Rwanda's Hutu president, Juvenal Habyanmana, was shot down, with all aboard, including President Cypnen Ntaryamira of Burundi, killed. A still secret 1997 U.N. investigation implicates Kagame in the assassinations. Warnings of a coming bloodbath, set off by the attack, were ignored, and a horrendous 89-day massacre of 500,000 Tutsis-and 50,000 Hutus-followed.
Kagame's movement then turned on the Hutu-dominated government, and took power. The massacres began again, this time of Hutus. More than a million Rwandan Hutus, both militia and civilians, who escaped the killing, died to eastern Zaire.
U.S. officials, according to the Washington Post, were pleased with Kagame and "deeply relieved that the rebels had halted the massacres, thus ending pressure for a U.S.-led intervention." As one writer observed, "Americas unease about its own attitude to the massacres in the spring of 1994 was one reason why it later sided with the triumphant victims." The U.S. "became increasingly close to the Rwandan government and the army that backed it.... Washington pumped military aid into Kagame s army and U. S. Army Special Forces and other military personnel trained hundreds of Rwandan forces."
At the same time, the U.S. kept tabs on the refugees in eastern Zaire, while mounting what was called a "humanitarian operation" in Rwanda, but which also included training of the Rwandan military in combat, counterinsurgency, psychological operations, etc.. One U.S. official interviewed by the Washington Post contended that "the United States is focusing disproportionate military assistance on Rwanda as part of the creation of a 'zone of influence' in East Africa.... " An African writer has

referred to this zone of influence as a confederation of "military princedoms [which] have appeared in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and, to a lesser extent, in Ethiopia and Eritrea.'' These U.S.-supported military regimes are characterized by "the repeated use of force in putting their internal and external policy strategies into effect." They are "obsessed with security" and they "clone themselves" by joining forces "with their own diasporas...whose citizenship is disputed .... [They] attract the services of 'rebels,' dissidents, and others, who serve as a screen for their intervention" in fragile and unstable neighboring countries. The role of the Rwandan and Ugandan princelings, Kagame and Museveni, in neighboring Congo is a classic example of U.S. meddling.

THE FALL OF MOBUTU, THE RISE OF KABILA

Still unclear is the full extent of U.S. military support for Kagame's move, via Kabila, against Mobutu and Zaire (and their bloody retribution against both Hutu militia and Hutu civilian refugees in the camps). "Many Africans," the Wall Street Journal noted, concluded that "the Zairean rebellion was the brainchild of Washington from the very start." In August 1996, six weeks before the RPA and Kabila's forces moved into Zaire, Kagame had visited Washington to discuss with Clinton administration officials the dangerous threat to his regime in Rwanda from the Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire, harboring militia among the civilians 2~ Both Kagame and U.S. officials later claimed unconvincingly that he left "disappointed" in not having instigated direct U.S. action. It was clear to the U.S., in any case, that Kagame was prepared to act, and that this was certainly in the U.S. government's interest. Kagame acted quickly after his visit to Washington. Kabila, a former Marxist exile, who had been recruited by the Tutsis, had been brought to Goma some time earlier, to be the national Congolese figurehead of an "insurgency" against Mobutu's army And in October 1996, when the full-scale incursion began, much of eastern Zaire was immediately taken. The camps were attacked, and many of the refugees were driven back to Rwanda or killed. It is unlikely that Kabila himself took part in the actions against the refugees, but there is no question that he had made a deal with the Devil: "Kabila's army is closely controlled by Rwandan officers who dominate its upper echelons. Kabila relied heavily on the well-trained Rwandan officers, along with Rwandan, Angolan, and Ugandan troops, to push Mobutu's army aside. But in so doing, he made a deal with people intent on bringing the 1994 ethnic war in Rwanda onto Congolese soil." as Kabila maintained his headquarters in Goma, in eastern Zaire, near the site of many of the camps. In the first months of the fighting, the U.S. denied any ties to Kabila and also denied that any foreign forces were fighting with him. Diplomatic signals, however, got crossed: At the start of the rebellion, in October, "U.S. ambassador to Rwanda, Robert Gnbbin, denied in the face of mounting evidence that the Rwandan army had any role in the action in eastern Zaire. But at the same time, in Mobutu's capital, Kinshasa, American envoy to Zaire, Dan Simpson, was denouncing the uprising as a Rwandan and Ugandan 'invasion.' The London Guardian noted, "U.S. policy initially was divided between offering active support for Rwandan intervention and looking the other way... In practice, it did both: the Pentagon helped out while the State Department pretended it wasn't happening." That the U.S. "helped out" is unquestionable; the motive for doing so is what we must address.
* A South African pilot in September 1996, "flew a planeload of assault rifles from Pretoria to...Burundi, where he was met by.. an official from the U.S. Embassy there. The weapons...were destined for Uvira...in Zaire, the birthplace of Mr. Kabila's revolt."
* In November, "senior officers from the U.S. Embassy in Rwanda were seen leaving Mr. Kabila's residence in Goma."
* By spring, a State Department official, Dennis Hankins, was ensconced in a local hotel in Goma "as the first full-time American diplomat posted to the capital of the rebel alliance.
* In April, the House passed a resolution calling on Mobutu to step down.

KABILA ARRIVES

Despite U.S. approval of and involvement in the overthrow of Mobutu, U.S. support for Kabila from the beginning was mixed at best, and hostility later intensified, as he became increasingly estranged from his Rwandan and Ugandan Tutsi mentors. After arriving in Kinshasa on May 19, 1997, Kabila's new government and teams of ecstatic Congolese began to clean up the capital and restore the country's infrastructure, bringing a semblance of normalcy to their lives, despite armed confrontations between newly appointed local police and rapid deployment squads. According to UNICEF 15,000 young soldiers patrolling Kinshasa did not speak the language and were strangers to the city Locals refused to have anything to do with them.
These "faceless" army and security forces, being reorganized under instructions from Rwanda and including many unidentified soldiers working for state security services, were regarded as "foreigners" by the people and viewed with distrust. Lt. Col. James Kabarebe, who became Army Chief of Staff, had been head of the Rwandan Republican Guard before he led the forces that overthrew Mobutu. Many other key figures had similar backgrounds. Jackson Nzinza, a Ugandan Tutsi who became Congo's Chief of National Security, had been the head of Rwanda's Internal Security Organization, allegedly responsible for numerous political murders, an activity he continued to practice in Congo. Bizima Karaha, Kabila's Foreign Minister, was another Rwandan Tutsi, whose uncle is a member of the Rwandan Parliament. Col. Ibingira, who later became Commander of North Kivu, was deeply involved in massacres of Hutu refugees.
During the 15 months between the May 1997 entry into Kinshasa and the August 1998 start of the current war, the U.S. became openly critical of the Kabila government. Most complaints voiced were related to ongoing murderous assaults on the Hutu refugees, who were not being protected properly in the U.N.-run camps or by Doctors Without Borders, who were also present. But there were other undercurrents, related to Realpolitic.
In April and May of 1997, as the downfall of Mobutu was imminent, reports of massacres which had occurred during the march to Kinshasa began to appear with regularity although it was often unclear just who the perpetrators had been. The AP reported on May 22 that "one of Kabila's soldiers" had shown a reporter a mass grave. The June 1 Boston Globe reported massacres of refugees who had "tried to flee troops led by then rebel leader Laurent Kabila." On May 28, 1997, State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns said "Kabila lacks democratic credentials." The AP report noted that "skepticism is strong among U.S. officials about the willingness of Kabila, once associated with leftist causes, to lead Zaire to democracy" At the same time, other Clintonites appeared optimistic. "U.S. officials are generally pleased with Kabila's actions since his forces deposed Mobutu two weeks ago. He has included opposition elements in his government and has promised free elections within two years." There were reports of mass graves in Kisangani, and U.N. efforts to investigate "have been blocked by forces affiliated with Kabila's Rebel Alliance." Still, some U.S. officials continued to believe that "alliance forces involved in wrongdoing were acting independently of Kabila." On June 3, a USAID team arrived in Congo to assess its assistance needs, particularly "funds to help Congo meet the challenge of holding national elections in April 1999, the target date set by President Kabila."
The next month Kabila's Foreign Minister, Bizima Karaha, visited Washington and, as evidenced by a lengthy interview he gave to UPI, did little to enhance U.S.-Congolese relations.:39 He was in Washington to ask the Clinton administration for help in reconstructing the country. But, as UPI noted, he was "not bringing a message the Clinton administration wants to hear."
For one thing, the U.S., with its typical monomania for "free and fair elections," even in the wake of the overthrow of thirty years of relentless dictatorship, was insisting that elections take place within two years, which, admittedly, Kabila had announced when he took over. Karaha referred to the pledge as merely "a goal," one which he doubted could be reached, given the continuing instability in the country
Karaha was also vehement in ruling out any participation in the new government by opposition leader Etienne Tshisekedi, Mobutu's last prime minister. "The United States," UPI noted, "one of the few nations to recognize Tshisekedi's brief appointment to head Mobutu's government during some of the fiercest fighting, has pointed to the opposition leader as exactly the type of figure that should be included in Kabila's administration." Karaha, with perhaps less diplomacy than might be expected from a foreign minister, called Tshisekedi a "provocateur" who "wants to create anarchy and chaos...an enemy of the people and of the government."
The handwriting was on the wall. A senior official told the UPI reporter "that Kabila can 'kiss goodbye' any hopes of American help if the positions taken by Karaha on elections and on Tshisekedi prove accurate reflections of the policies Kabila plans to pursue."

WAR CRIME ALLEGATIONS

The demand that the massacres committed during the overthrow of Mobutu be fully investigated and that the perpetrators be identified and punished was raised, but the U.N. and the Clinton administration never revealed what they knew-that these were Tutsi revenge killings. A few reports conceded that the atrocities were committed by troops beyond Kabila's control. The media attacks against Kabila were relentless, always ignoring the astonishing degree to which foreign nations, Rwanda and Uganda, exercised absolute control over the Congolese military and security services.
Kabila responded cryptically to calls from human rights organizations demanding investigation into the massacres, claiming that countries and international groups must assume some of the responsibility "All the forces...including in the name of sending humanitarian assistance, are [also] responsible...for these great violations." He stopped short of conceding that Rwandan troops, in fact, committed mass killings in their sweep across the country But he hinted at complicity by both the U.S. government and certain human rights groups.

An October 1997 Human Rights Watch report with the International Federation of Human Rights Leagues stated, "Kabila's troops, particularly Rwandan allies, segregated and executed young men, former Hutu government officials and Hutu intellectuals." They accused the U.S. of ignoring the massacres to "hasten a conclusion to the region's three-year refugee crisis."
An exception to most media coverage was a revealing Washington Post investigation by Scott Campbell, placing much of the blame on Paul Kagame's Rwandans, and noting that, while the Defense Department admitted training RPA troops inside Rwanda, "knowledgeable witnesses told me they had seen U.S. soldiers in the company of RPA troops on Congolese territory on various dates including July 23rd and 24th of this year... Massacre sites continue to be cleaned up and potential witnesses intimidated... Rwandan officers and troops remain in the Congo in the same areas where they participated in massacres, representing a lethal threat to any who would dare collaborate with the U.N. team."
Campbell concluded by urging that "Kabila and the international community.. insist that Kagame withdraw his troops from Congolese territory and investigate anyone suspected of killing civilians. Armed Hutu soldiers and militia must also finally be disarmed and brought to justice."
It became apparent that the Clinton administration would welcome Kabila's overthrow, and perhaps had always envisioned such an outcome. The desired scenario was floated in World Policy Review, where, in the summer of 1998, just before the second Congo invasion, Frank Smythe savaged Kabila, calling him a "thug," and stating that "Voices from all quarters say that the Kabila regime is corrupt. Even his former allies in Rwanda, Uganda, and Eritrea have begun asking whether they should have recruited another Zairean to lead operations in eastern Zaire." The notion that Paul Kagame was sensitive to charges of official corruption is laughable, but Smythe's article confirmed that the die was cast.
At the same time, much "shiny new military hardware was appearing at Kigali airport in Rwanda." It was not long before what the western press would dub "Africa's First World War" began.

OUSTER, ATTEMPTED COUP, AND INVASION

Only four months after President Clinton's March 1998 trip to Africa, Kabila ordered all Rwandan and Ugandan Tutsi troops and military instructors out of the country. On July 28, 1998, they began to leave, taking much of what was left of the DRC treasury with them.
Kabila later described a foiled assassination attempt against him as the factor that precipitated the ouster, as well as the Tutsi killings of Hutu refugees, which had spread to the central Equatorial region.
On August 2, only four days later, Rwanda and Uganda invaded Congo from the east with ground troops from their regular armies. And just two days after that, in what must have involved months of forward planning, there were two airborne invasions by Rwanda in the west, and Ugandan troops simultaneously landed in the south and occupied the ports.
An attempted coup was under way.
While some "rebels" were involved in the invasion (mostly former Mobutu officers), "Rwandan and Ugandan soldiers...constitute the major portion of those troops which are combating Kabila's government," according to a statement at the time by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. Nevertheless, it was months before Uganda and Rwanda admitted that their soldiers were involved in the invasion. (The U.S. has yet to confirm its participation.)
The early fighting in western Congo almost reached Kinshasa. For nearly a month, Rwandan troops controlled Kitona airport, and Ugandans in the southwest held the Inga dam, cutting electricity and water into the capital. In mid-August, when the invaders totally defied a demand from the Organization of African Unity to lay down their arms, Zimbabwe and Angola, and later Namibia, decided to send troops to Congo to assist the government in beating back the assault. It was only after fierce fighting, with vital military support from the Angolans and Zimbabweans, along with spirited defense from the local populace in Kinshasa, that the rebels were repulsed at the gates of the capital. Ultimately, by the end of August, they were driven back to the eastern regions.

LIFE IN THE OCCUPIED ZONE

The battle in eastern Congo is another story, one that still rages, despite more than a year of cease-fire efforts. In North Kivu, South Kivu, and Haut-Congo provinces the invaders have been able to occupy vast reaches of territory, at present more than half of the entire country. (Congo is more than one-fourth the size of the U.S.) The isolated infrastructure of this area, encompassing most of the mineral wealth of Congo, has remained under the effective control of rebel groups, as proxies for the Ugandans, the Rwandans, and the various mining firms and their private security forces.
Since the invasion, for almost two years, the fortunes of the "rebel" groups, themselves riven with splits and recriminations, have been inextricably tied to the mercurial and deteriorating relations between Uganda and Rwanda, all competing for Congo's fabulous mineral wealth. Personal relations between the Ugandan and Rwandan leaders were close for many years, ever since Kagame, as an exile in Uganda, was a rising star in its army. He helped Museveni come to power By the summer of 1999, however, relations were so strained between the two countries that their troops fought a bloody three-day battle in Kisangani. Rwanda had attempted, unsuccessfully, to take control of the Haut-Congo capital, where the Ugandan army and rebels have their headquarters.

THE REBEL SURROGATES

One branch of the Congolese Union for Democracy (RCD), based on the border with Uganda, is headed by Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, a former university professor who was brought from exile in Tanzania and appeared in public three weeks after the attempted coup. By all reports, he is a Congolese nationalist who is in favor of a non-military solution, but whose ambition to be the leader of Congo has him, in some analysts' opinion, in "over his head." Wamba dia Wamba first operated out of Goma with the protection of Rwandan Tutsi and former Mobutu troops. When political-military differences became severe, in April 1999, ousted by the military faction and in fear for his life, he moved the headquarters of his group to Kisangani and renamed his operation RCDML. He is now under the protection of the Ugandan army
Rwanda backs the military branch of Wamba's former group, still in Goma and now led by Dr. Emile Ilunga, from Katanga, Kabila's home province. Ilunga's faction is now called RCD-Goma. The security chief for this branch is Bizima Karaha, Kabila's former foreign minister.
Yet another group, the Movement for Congolese Liberation (MLC), in the north central region, is also backed by Uganda, led by Jean-Pierre Bemba, a young businessman during the Mobutu era. His group is composed of some former Mobutu officers and soldiers. Curiously, his father, Saolona Bemba, a very wealthy former close associate of Mobutu, was put in jail in Kinshasa when Kabila took power. The elder Bemba somehow transformed himself into Kabila's political ally and is now the DRC Minister of Economy and Industry (even as his son plots the overthrow of the Kabila government).
The rebels are definitely not welcome in most of the northeast half of the country they control. "[T]he men seeking to overthrow the President of Congo, Laurent Kabila, have been decidedly unpopular even as they conquered nearly half this huge country. They are linked too closely with Rwanda, which provides the rebels with troops and arms but is despised by many ordinary Congolese." The London Economist had earlier acknowledged that "The second rebellion in two years is unpopular with most Congolese. In 1996, the rebels [here meaning Kabila's forces] held crowded rallies at which they recruited young fighters. In the eastern Kivu province which the rebels [here meaning Kabila's opponents] still hold, and in the towns outside Kivu which they have captured...rallies have been...sparsely attended...rebel leaders have been booed, and there have been no lines of young men eager to join.''
Abuses, indeed atrocities, by the RCD and other rebel groups in North and South Kivu have been well-documented. "Reports from South Kivu strongly suggest the danger of large-scale violence among different ethnic groups there. Among several alleged massacres and atrocities is the burial alive of 15 women in Kivu province by rebels, apparently in suspicion of contacts with Mayi-Mayi forces." Mayi-Mayi are a local tribe that supports Kabila because of their antipathy for the Tutsi aggressors.
Another conflict-this one in the rebel-controlled area bordering on Uganda-is a Ugandan-instigated war between the Hema and the Lendu tribes. Long at peace, albeit tensely, they began battling fiercely when Ugandan forces took control of the region and paid the Hema to step up the level of warfare. The fighting has been described as "massacres on a chilling scale." The Ugandans have used the fighting as an excuse to send more regular army troops into the area. Many other examples of infighting among rebel groups and their sponsors are surfacing.
Although it is "generally agreed that the rebels are thoroughly detested in the areas they have now occupied for more than a year," the Congolese army has been unable to dislodge them.
So, "de facto partition" has come to Congo. Money is a major factor. As Le Monde Diplomatique noted, "the well-equipped Rwandan and Ugandan troops [with the rebels] are paid in dollars."
And the dollars are flowing. Eastern Congo, virtually annexed by Uganda and Rwanda, is one of the most mineral-rich areas in the world. Gold and diamonds and rare strategic minerals are flowing into the two countries, earning vast sums for their treasures.
The border between Congo and Rwanda is "a mere formality." The international mining companies that operate in Kivu protect the Rwandans, who "have a monopoly on the mining and marketing of those minerals."
The West has ignored the blatant theft of Congo's sovereign natural resources. Some believe this is because its bonafides were so shattered by its apparent indifference to the 1994 atrocities. Paul Kagame was politically sophisticated enough, some analysts noted, that, since 1994, he has "played on Washington's sense of guilt about the genocide.'' Le Monde Diplomatique agreed "The genocide of the Tutsis is now invoked to play on the international community's sense of guilt and persuade the United States to look with a kindly eye on what is nothing less than a plan to conquer and control the resources of the Congo." Others believe, instead, there is an overwhelming coincidence of interests for all of the parties involved-greed.

THE LUSAKA ACCORD

Less than two months after rebels had taken control of eastern Congo and were moving toward the diamond mines in the southwest near Angola, Susan Rice began to press for a cease-fire. After two days of discussion with Kabila in Kinshasa, on November 1, Rice went to Zambia for talks with President Frederick Chiluba, the anointed mediator. In Lusaka, Rice pressed her point. "There is absolutely no military solution which is viable." Given the unending U.S. military support for Rwanda and Uganda, Rice knew well why a military solution was impossible for the Congolese, half of whose country was under foreign occupation.
But more than eight months were to elapse before any agreement was reached. With the crucial support of Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia, Congo was able to halt any further rebel advances and to protect the vital southeast, Katanga, with its diamond mines. (Rebel groups and their Ugandan and Rwandan sponsors were constantly squabbling, having splits, and moving headquarters, and the Rwandans and Ugandans were fighting each other )
Moreover, the Americans' hand-picked peace broker, Chiluba, was hardly neutral. Frederick Chiluba, president of Zambia, was known to allow UNITA to transit through Zambian territory in their constant forays against Angola. Chiluba was also discovered to have extensive interests in the internationally outlawed UNITA diamond trade, the main source of financing for the rebel group. UNITA was not only wreaking havoc, as it has for 25 years, in Angola, Congo's close and critical ally its troops were now fighting the DRC in Congo as well, alongside the Rwandan rebels.
By the end of the year, pressures on Kabila to enter talks were overpowering, even though it had become clear to the world that Congo had been invaded and occupied by foreign powers and was not in the throes of a civil war.
In January 1999, Congo, Rwanda, Uganda, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Angola agreed to an African-sponsored cease-fire framework, but since the rebel groups had not been invited to the meetings, nothing would be meaningful until they agreed.
The wheeling and dealing intensified through the spring of 1999. Numerous meetings were held under the auspices of the Organization for African Unity and the Southern African Development Community. Nevertheless, it took U.S. pressure on the participants-including Nelson Mandela's good offices (splitting still further what were once the united frontline states)-to forge an agreement that would satisfy the rebels. This was not difficult, given the impressive level of U.S. military and economic support for Rwanda and Uganda, as well as for the South African government.
In June, foreign and defense ministers gathered in Lusaka, later joined by their nations' leaders, and by July 7 new terms of the cease-fire accord had been announced. Clinton's special envoy for Africa, Howard Wolpe, who was in Lusaka for the duration, noted, somewhat ominously "Our sense is that the key players have come to comprehend how enormously costly this is not only to the people of the Congo but to the entire region."
Of all Congo's allies, Angola has the most serious stake in the outcome of the war. UNITA forces have been using southern Congo to attack Luanda's troops since Mobutu's time and had long before joined with Rwandan Tutsi fighters. In late August 1998, only weeks after the war began, UNITA representatives met with Kagame. Some UNITA fighters were also captured in "rebel" skirmishes. Further complicating the situation, "UNITA has reportedly received South African arms, shipped to Mozambique and flown on South African aircraft to Angola by way of Zambia." After decades of support for UNITA, the U.S., according to U.N. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, now proposed to "throw its weight behind" efforts to "tighten and enforce sanctions" against them
The effect on Namibia has also been significant. In August, a separatist group in Namibia's Caprivi Strip, previously inactive, launched a series of military attacks made possible by supplies and other assistance from UNITA. Their "suspected motive," the New York Times noted, "is to punish Namibia for its role in the Congo war" As recently as February 2000, UNITA troops were attacking Namibian border villages. Namibia has "a growing problem with UNITA along its border with Angola and in the breakaway Caprivi Strip.... Caprivi separatists reportedly receive aid not only from UNITA, but also from Botswana and Zambia." In addition, Zimbabwe's contributions to the Congo war effort played a major role in the devastation of its economy and the likely ouster of President Robert Mugabe.
When everyone sat down in Lusaka, the rebels dampened U.S. enthusiasm by refusing to sign the accord (unable to agree on who would sign it on their behalf). It would take another month and a half before the RCD rivals agreed that both factions would sign.
It was just at this moment that Richard Holbrooke began to take center stage. In August, Clinton administration horse-trading with Senate Republicans had abandoned funding for U.N. projects overseas that supported abortion programs in exchange for confirmation of Holbrooke as U.N. ambassador In the meantime, his Africa staff had been shepherding the accords to their signing, maintaining a constant pressure on Kabila to accede.
The agreement called for a step-by-step withdrawal of foreign troops, including the rebels, within 180 days, rather than immediately as the African-sponsored version had required. This meant that the rebels would stay in Congo. In any case, that deadline was never met. The foreign troops never left
Cease-fire violations since then have become rampant. By mid-November each side accused the other of violations. Susan Rice continued to insist, "Lusaka is the only viable way It can and must be implemented." She then announced that Richard Holbrooke would travel to the region in December When he did, he "acknowledged that unlike the Balkans, where military might and billions of dollars have been devoted to peacemaking, NATO was not available to impose a settlement." Nevertheless, he was both threatening and patronizing. The OAU, he insisted, must "get its act together," or the U.S. would not support a peacekeeping operation at all.
This was a reference to another critical provision of the accords, calling for the deployment of a United Nations peacekeeping force within 120 days, another unmet deadline. The U.N. force has only just been authorized, after a special session of the Security Council in January. Albright, Holbrooke, and company had learned to be less publicly ham-handed since their manipulations of the Rambouillet meetings on Yugoslavia had been widely exposed, and the Security Council sessions were relatively open and smooth, paving the way for U.N. approval.
Nevertheless, the U.S. role continues to grow, even as the U.N. prepares to deploy a woefully inadequate 5,000-man peacekeeping force. The Pentagon is already giving military advice to the U.N on that force. It is, in the words of Holbrooke, giving "the United Nations the benefit of U.S. experience in such matters." Direct participation of U.S. personnel remains a touchy subject, after the debacle in Somalia, also under Clinton's watch. Unfortunately former South African President Nelson Mandela has not only offered to send South African troops to Congo, but has also publicly urged the participation of U.S. forces there, a certain recipe for disaster

WHAT IT REALLY MEANS: BALKANIZATION

The U.S. shaping of, and insistent support for, the Lusaka accords only highlights what has been clear for some time. The agreement was not a good deal for the Congo government, and Kabila was forced to accede only because of the implicit threat that refusal would be met by even greater assistance to the rebels and the potential dismantling of the entire country. In stark contrast to the resolutions of the OAU and the SADC, and to the earlier draft agreement before the last gathering in Lusaka, the final accord did not even recognize the legitimacy of the DRC government or President Kabila.
When the agreement was signed, U S. envoy Howard Wolpe noted, "its a very important beginning to have all the parties together, collectively laying out a road map." But the map is of a partitioned, divided Congo, contrary to the OAU Charter and a throw-back to the Berlin Conference of 1885, when the western powers drew the boundaries of African nations with impunity
More than a year ago, the New York Times launched what can now be identified as a major propaganda campaign to legitimize the Balkanization of Africa, much as the re-Balkanization of Yugoslavia was promoted in the West during the 1990s. On January 12, 1999, when the Lusaka accord
lay well in the future, a front-page article by lan Fisher with Norimitsu Onishi entitled "Congo's Struggle May Unleash Broad Strife to Redraw Africa," appeared. Its rhetorical trick was to lay the responsibility for the current borders on meddling European colonialists, implying, despite OAU recognition of those borders as inviolate, that the redrawing of those boundaries by African combatants might be more legitimate: "The borders of African nations, set up arbitrarily by the Europeans who colonized the continent a century ago, are supposed to be inviolate. Yet Congo is now split in two, perhaps for good."
While the article paid lip service to the "stability" lent to the continent by respect for those boundaries, it planted the seeds of doubt: "The borders established [at the Berlin Conference] had little to do with geography or the lines that separated ethnic groups."
A few days later, the Times campaign continued, more directly A long article on January 16 by Howard W French was entitled "The African Question: Who Is to Blame? The Finger Points to the West, and Congo Is a Harsh Example." While some recognition was given to the generally exploitative legacy of "European subjugation and rule," the imposition of boundaries was stressed: "colonial subjugation brutally ended Africa's sovereign evolution toward modern nation-states." An African scholar at the State University of New York at Buffalo was quoted: "The example I like to think of is if an African imperial army had marched into Europe in the Middle Ages and required Germany France, and England to live together by force of arms. It would have unleashed untold mayhem... " "Almost every time the Europeans created a state," French wrote, "ethnic groups or previously existing African polities were split by the new borders, undermining the new states' claims to legitimacy in the eyes of their inhabitants."

PERMANENT DIVISION?

Most recently the Times, while never openly endorsing partition, has lauded the "relative stability" of the current division of Congo and has opined that the main mission of the U.N. peacekeeping force will be to "provide security in relatively stable zones.
It is not unlikely that the boundaries of a two-Congo Africa have already been set-imposed yet again by the western powers.
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Saturday, 2 July 2011

THE DRC AT THE CROSSROADS AT THE RESTRUCTURING OF INTERNATIONAL CARDS

In the bitter battle to get its hands on raw materials that engage the states in the current era of globalization, the DRC, because full of these materials while its elite does not seem aware of the issue, still running the risk of being victim and loser of angry confrontations in perspective.
  Increasingly, the world has become multipolar. The restructuring of the international card is no longer an illusion. It is now lived in daily life. Beware of nations that pretend to forget. The coming war for resources is the prelude to the great battle of economic crisis. Countries like the DRC, well endowed with natural resources, are on the line of sight. But are the Congolese elites conscious? That is the problem.

The international financial crisis of 2008 helped to reshape the world by moving the center of control of the international economy. If, for a long time, it is the West that has always ruled over the world, it is no longer the case. Now the lines have moved significantly on the international stage, so that even the very exclusive cartel comprising the eight most industrialized countries of the world - the G8 - was forced to open up to others to save the global economy in distress .

Thus was born the G20 grouping, in addition to the G8, the so-called emerging countries, paradoxically still regarded as developing countries. The control center of the world is moving. Large cracks in the euro zone economies are not a prelude. All analysts agree that the world today is not the same as before 2008. Indeed, the 2008 financial crisis has recreated other actors such as China, India, Brazil, South Korea, etc. Thanks to them, one recognizes that the world economy was finally able to get out of the depression created by the financial crisis of that year.

On the international scene, which embodied the West, there is a time rigor and orthodoxy is no longer the sole mentor. The West has totally lost its credibility and omnipotence. As proof, the financial market, on which it has always based its prosperity, has shown its limits by compromising the lead up into the abyss. It is thanks to the other, the marginalized of the system, namely the emerging, that the system could be saved in extremis.

While elsewhere the data has changed significantly, unfortunately in Africa, many people swear by international institutions modeled on neoliberalism. On this continent, all projects or development programs are, in most cases, cut on this model. As if struck with amnesia, Africa seems to ignore that the West would not be the center of the world. The gravitation is now taking place along several epicenters. Certainly, the neoliberal model was out of breath. Africa needs to notice.

What about the DRC?

What applies to Africa is also necessary to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Country with immense natural potential, the DRC is now the laughingstock of the world, this beautiful woman so highly coveted. Everyone desires her. But not everyone has the same intentions. This is the portrait that best applies to the current position of the DRC. Country in the heart of Africa - the very one that Franz Fanon predicted as trigger for the development of Africa - the DRC is truly at the center of major challenges it will face in the coming days. These issues are so huge that the country must assert real leadership for not being taken by the events.

The recurrent tensions in the east of the country suffice to prove it. All of the West and emerging markets are eager to have this beautiful woman at all costs. It is for the DRC to know just to play the game and not just fall for the guys. There is evidence now that the salvation of the DRC will not come from the West, let alone the East. In the dynamics of the re-composition of the international card, the DRC must rebuild its true identity, the one on which it will build its development. Remaining in the lagging of neoliberalism is to show lack of ideal for a nation to play a leading role in the development of Africa. Transformed into a black hole at all levels, the recovery of the future of the DRC is likely to ensure the development of an entire continent. Geostrategy at horror for the country with power vacuum, the Congolese elites have not always understood!

What the DRC needs in this time is its reconstruction and the redefining of its clear and global geopolitical vision, not to engage in predation of her gift of nature, that is to say, the resources of soil and subsoil. The intellectual Congolese elite must seize this moment, internationally, to see the lines moves so that it can reposition itself on the orbit. In that way, the country can hold on its own in the game. In other words, we need a visionary and a collective leadership, and said, based on a specific ideal.
Time to Decide

What to do? Should, as it were, be seduced by the development model advocated by the neo-liberal West? The Chinese model, since we must mention it, can serve in many respects to the DRC. But the choice to be made should not be rushed and far from an internal strategy development.

Each other and any should be put in place by the Congolese themselves. This is what the ingenuity of the makers will be put to in order not to jeopardize the future of the whole nation. The power of the DRC must be combined in proportion to the best choices in this time of planetary changes. More than ever, the vision of greatness must live within the elite against the wind blowing favorably.
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Monday, 18 April 2011

THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO: FAILED STATE?

The Democratic Republic of Congo

Author and Page information

Described by some as Africa’s first World War, the conflict in the DRC (formerly known as Zaire) has involved seven nations.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is an enormous country in the center of the African continentThe central African country is bordered by numerous nations with whom it has had conflicts
There have been a number of complex reasons, including conflicts over basic resources such as water, access and control over rich minerals and other resources as well as various political agendas.
This has been fueled and supported by various national and international corporations and other regimes which have an interest in the outcome of the conflict.
Since the outbreak of fighting in August 1998,
  • Some 5.4 million people have died
  • It has been the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II
  • The vast majority have actually died from non-violent causes such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition—all typically preventable in normal circumstances, but have come about because of the conflict
  • Although 19% of the population, children account for 47% of the deaths
  • Although many have returned home as violence has slightly decreased, there are still some 1.5 million internally displaced or refugees
  • Some 45,000 continue to die each month
These shocking figures would usually be more than enough to get media attention the world over, especially if it were to threaten influential nations in some way. Yet, perhaps as a cruel irony, influential nations in the world benefit from the vast resources coming from the DRC for which people are dying over.

Brief Background

As with most conflicts in Africa, the current situation has much to do with the legacy of colonialism. From the violent 1885 Belgian imposition of colonial rule by King Leopold II who regarded it as his personal fiefdom and called it the Congo Free State (but apparently never once went there himself), millions have been killed. The murders have been grotesque, with chopped limbs and more, similar to what has been seen in Sierra Leone recently.
After 75 years of colonial rule, the Belgians left very abruptly, relinquishing the political rights to the people of Congo in 1960. However, economic rights were not there for the country to flourish.
This brief video summarizes the initial challenges the DRC faced after independence:
Patrice Lumumba, January 11, 2007
As well as Belgium’s historical interests, the changing world after World War II meant Cold War interests also played its part.
More evidence has emerged that when United States president Dwight Eisenhower met his national security advisers to talk about the situation in Congo two months after the June 1961 independence he said Lumumba, the country’s first prime minister, should be eliminated.
— Derek Ingram, 40 years on—Lumumba still haunts the West, Gemini News Service, 1 September 2000
Just a few months after Lumumba became head of state, he was overthrown with US and European support for a Cold War ally, Mobutu Sese Soko, (and for the rich resources that would then be available cheaply, rather than used for Congo’s own people and development.)
U.S. policy toward Mobutu was rationalized on the grounds of fighting “communism” and Soviet influence in Africa, but the U.S. was clearly more concerned with securing its own interests in the region than helping foster a stable, secure, and peaceful future for the people of Central Africa. Lying at the center of the continent, Zaire could provide the U.S. with access to important resources, transportation routes, and political favors. Over the years, U.S. rhetoric changed slightly, placing greater emphasis on democratic reform of the regime and increased attention to human rights, but in reality policy continued to focus on promoting narrowly defined U.S. economic and strategic interests.
… The U.S. prolonged the rule of Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Soko by providing more than $300 million in weapons and $100 million in military training. Mobutu used his U.S.-supplied arsenal to repress his own people and plunder his nation’s economy for three decades, until his brutal regime was overthrown by Laurent Kabila’s forces in 1997. When Kabila took power, the Clinton administration quickly offered military support by developing a plan for new training operations with the armed forces.
— William D. Hartung and Bridget Moix, Deadly Legacy: U.S. Arms to Africa and the Congo War, Arms Trade Resource Center, World Policy Institute, January 2000
As Stephen Weissman summarizes, in 2002, following an extensive parliamentary inquiry, the Belgian government assumed a portion of responsibility for Lumumba’s murder. But the US continued to deny allegations of its involvement. But a new analysis of declassified documents shows the US certainly played a role in Lumumba’s death.
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Struggle for Political Power

The US backed the dictator Mobutu in the overthrow of the previous leader, Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1960. (Lumumba was also non-aligned in geopolitical/cold-war sense, so not seen favorably by the US.) Corruption, siphoning off massive personal wealth, a plunge in copper prices, and mounting debt led to enormous economic downturns:
From the time of Belgian colonial rule, the inhabitants of the region have derived little if any benefit from its natural wealth. Instead, they have suffered an unbroken succession of abusive political administrations, military authorities and armed political groups that have looted the region and committed human rights abuses with impunity. King Leopold II accrued vast personal wealth without ever setting foot on Congolese soil. The Belgian rulers of the then Belgian Congo, from 1905 to 1960 used slave labour to plunder its rubber, ivory and timber.
After independence in 1960, the long presidency of Mobutu Sese Seko made the newly named Zaire notorious for cronyism and corruption. When President Mobutu came into office in 1965, a sustained period of institutionalised corruption and misappropriation of state resources began. Large proportions of the revenues from state-owned companies, such as the copper and cobalt company Gécamines, went not to the state treasury but straight into the pockets of President Mobutu and his closest allies.
— “Our brothers who help kill us”—economic exploitation and human rights abuses in the east, Amnesty International Report, AFR 62/010/2003, April 1, 2003.
The impact of this corruption is felt on the citizens:
Today, Mobutu is deposed and dead, but his legacies live on. His family holds his fortune, and his country holds his $12 billion debt. In a nation with an annual income of $110 per capita, each resident theoretically owes foreign creditors $236.
— David Malin Roodman, Still Waiting for the Jubilee, World Watch Institute, 26 April 2001.
Since then, there have been many internal conflicts where all sides have been supported from various neighbors. The conflict has also been fueled by weapons sales and by military training. The weapons have come from the former Soviet bloc countries as well as the United States, who have also provided military training.
The United States military has been covertly involved in the wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a US parliamentary subcommittee has been told. Intelligence specialist Wayne Madsen, appearing before the US House subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights, also said American companies, including one linked to former President George Bush Snr, the father of the current US President, are stoking the Congo conflict for monetary gains.
— John Kakande, US Army Operated Secretly in Congo, allAfrica.com, June 17, 2001
When Congolese President Laurent Kabila came to power in May 1997, toppling Marshall Mobutu, with the aid of Rwanda, Uganda, Angola, Burundi and Eritrea, it was hoped that a revival would be seen in the region. Instead, the situation deteriorated. Kabila, also backed by the US, had been accused by rebels (made up of Congolese soldiers, Congolese Tutsi Banyamulenge, Rwandan, Ugandan and some Burundian government troops) of turning into a dictator, of mismanagement, corruption and supporting various paramilitary groups who oppose his former allies. As the conflict had raged on, rebels controlled about a third of the entire country (the eastern parts). Laurent Kabila had received support from Angolan, Zimbabwean and Namibian troops.
Up to the assasination of Laurent Kabila in January 2001, Angola, Zimbabwe, and Namibia supported the Congolese government, while the rebels were backed by the governments of Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.
The reasons for different regions getting involved are all murky. Rwanda is one example, summarizing a Daily Telegraph news report (31 August 2002): The role of Rwanda, though small, has had a number of forces in large areas of the country. This has been in the backdrop of the genocide when more than 800,000 mainly Tutsi Rwandans were slaughtered. Hutu interahamwe militia carried out most of the massacres and fled to neighboring Congo in the eastern region of the DRC after the genocide. From there, they often launched attacks into their home country, prompting a Rwandan invasion. As a result, Rwanda has justified its role in the four-year war by saying it wanted to secure its border, while critics accused it of using the interahamwe attacks as an excuse to deploy 20,000 troops to take control of Congolese diamond mines and other mineral resources.
And as Amnesty International adds, “the UN Panel of Experts indicated, in its first report [Report of the UN Panel of Experts, April 2001] that, unlike Rwanda, the Ugandan government does not benefit directly as a government from the resources exploitation in Congo. Only individuals were gaining from it. But the Ugandan government has remained silent and has taken no disciplinary action against those individuals.”
The effects and tactics seen from the conflict have been many, according to the same Amnesty report, including:
  • Shifting alliances as needed to achieve the economic exploitation;
  • Repeated military operations and violence, including rape and other forms of attacks on civilians, in areas rich in mineral resources;
  • Disrupting humanitarian assistance;
  • Pillage as a strategy of war;
    • Looting often accompanied by torture, killings, rape
    • Targeting harvests
    • Stealing from medical centers
    • Planned and coordinated attacks and robbing of villages
    • Systematically pillaging food aid
  • Killing people for resisting extortion;
  • Corruption and 'taxation' where the taxes are not used for the stated purposes or are extortionate, while exempting elites in various ways;
  • Public services have predictably collapsed;
  • Ethnic rivalries have been fueled by economic interests;
  • Forced labor and displacement;
  • Sexual exploitation;
  • and many more.
Despite the Lusaka peace agreement signed in 1999, there was still fighting going on and the peace was fragile. There were various political problems in trying to get a UN peacekeeping force in there to help out, while killings continued. Due to conflicts of interests, there were fears that the UN peacekeeping mission would even be aborted before it got started. (The UN deployed team is known as MONUC. It was a small cease-fire monitoring body whose mandate was strengthened in July 2003 to “protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence.” Amnesty International for example, has noted that “MONUC has been a hostage to its weak mandate and has lacked the necessary equipment, personnel and international political backing.”)
On January 16, 2001 Laurent Kabila himself was assassinated and his son Joseph Kabila was sworn in as the new President of the DRC. He said that he would further the need for cooperation with the United Nations in deployment of troops, further dialog of national reconciliation and help revive the stalled Lusaka peace agreements (also with France’s request). However, the alignments of power have been in flux with many parties involved.
In a dialog that was supposed to comprise five components, two rebel movements, an opposition group (the MLC) as well as the Rwandan-backed Congolese Rally for Democracy, non-armed opposition groups, political parties, civil society organizations and the government, only the government and one opposition group did the main talks on the power sharing question. The Lusaka agreements were declared dead, though it was said that attempts would be made to continue dialog. Various other groups have had disagreements on a variety of issues, and as the International crisis group concludes (14 May 2002), “the future for the Democratic Republic of Congo remains uncertain.”
For more on the issue of power sharing and the political realignments in the conflict see for example:
Nonetheless, at the end of August 2002, a peace agreement had been signed to supposedly end the civil war, though only Jospeh Kabila, president of DRC, and Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda were party to this agreement.
However, the United Nations reported in October 2002 that the plunder of gems and minerals continued, with elite networks running a self-financing war economy centered on pillage.
The main fighting has been on the eastern side of DRC. It is mostly under foreign control, and over three quarters of the estimated number of killings have taken place there, with approximately 90 per cent of the DRC’s internally displaced population having fled violence from that region.
Under a growing escalation of violence, in June 2003 a small “rapid reaction force” led by the French (Interim Emergency Multinational Force—IEMF) was also deployed to the town of Bunia in eastern DRC. However, its mandate was very limited and was withdrawn on 1 September 2003 to be replaced by a larger contingent of MONUC. Amnesty International noted that IEMF had been almost universally welcomed by the civilian population of Bunia, having contributed greatly to improving the security situation in Bunia itself. With the replacement by MONUC, Amnesty International has continued raising concerns at the limited mandate, resources, international political backing and resolve of MONUC.
In 2006, Joseph Kabila was elected as president in what was deemed a credible electoral process where around two thirds of voters actually voted, just under 60% of whom voted for Kabila. Around 40% voted for Jean-Pierre Bemba who was more popular along the eastern part of the country.
Kabila was voted in on a strong platform of prices to stamp out corruption and promote health, education, housing, employment and infrastructure. However, some four years on the International Crisis Group describes his record as “abysmal” because his presidency is “seeking to impose its power on all branches of the state and maintain parallel networks of decision-making.” In addition,
The regime has undermined the independence of the judicial branch by running an anti-corruption campaign that is politically biased. It has used money and coercion to eliminate challenges to its authority and to fight against the local rebellions that have happened since 2006. Kabila is contemplating amending the constitution on the pretext of addressing difficulties in implementing decentralisation. Any constitutional amendment aiming at concentrating more power at the level of the presidency or controlling dissenting voices, however, would pose a threat to already weakened mechanisms of checks and balances. It is unlikely local elections will be held before the end of parliament’s first term, putting the prospect of general elections in 2011 at risk.
… Given its size and its tense internal politics, the DRC is prone to local rebellions fuelled by domestic discontent that can easily get out of control. In this context, a new international strategy is needed to support democratic consolidation and to prevent new risks of destabilisation.
— Congo: A Stalled Democratic Agenda, Africa Briefing 73, International Crisis Group, April 8, 2010
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An International Battle Over Resources

Due to the immense natural resources in this nation, various foreign powers, as well as internal, have sought to gain an advantage.
Laurent Kabila had accused some of his former allies, such as Rwanda and Uganda as having ulterior motives, especially in terms of resources, such as water, diamonds, and other vast, rich resources and minerals. In fact, all sides have been accused of having commercial interests in this war due to the vast resources involved.
The DRC’s rich resources provide easy ways to finance the conflict and the rebels had long been successful in setting up financial administrative bodies in their controlled areas, especially with regards to trading with Rwanda and Uganda, while Kabila had also been able to finance his side of the conflict.
There are many resources and minerals etc being exploited, including (but not limited to):
  • Water
  • Diamonds
  • Coltan
  • Cassiterite
  • Tin
  • Copper
  • Timber
A number of major human rights groups have charged that some multinational corporations from rich nations have been profiting from the war and have developed “elite networks” of key political, military, and business elites to plunder the Congo’s natural resources.
Yet, a number of companies and western governments pressured a United Nations panel to omit details of shady business dealings in a report out in October 2003. As reported by the British newspaper, The Independent:
Last October [2002], the panel accused 85 companies of breaching OECD standards through their business activities. Rape, murder, torture and other human rights abuses followed the scramble to exploit Congo’s wealth after war exploded in 1998.
For example the trade in coltan, a rare mineral used in computers and mobile phones, had social effects “akin to slavery”, the panel said. But no Western government had investigated the companies alleged to have links with such abuses. Some, including ones from the UK, US, Belgium and Germany, had lobbied to have their companies’ names cleared from the “list of shame”.
“Many governments overtly or covertly exerted pressure on the panel and the Security Council to exonerate their companies,” Ms Feeney said. Some companies gave legitimate explanations for their business in Congo, or pulled out. But lawyers for others challenge the panel’s findings, often capitalising on errors in earlier reports as proof of unreliability.
In the report this week, the cases against 48 companies are “resolved” and requiring “no further action”.
— Declan Walsh, UN cuts details of Western profiteers from Congo report, The Independent, October 27, 2003
When the UN finally released the report at the end of October 2003, they listed approximately 125 companies and individuals listed that had been named in a previous report by the panel for having contributed directly or indirectly to the conflict in the DRC.
Other companies, the report noted, may not have been directly linked to conflict, but had more indirect ties to the main protagonists. Such companies benefited from the chaotic environment in the DRC. For example, they would obtain concessions or contracts from the DRC on terms that were more favorable than they might receive in countries where there was peace and stability. (See for example, page 6, par 12 of the report.)
The above-mentioned coltan has been the source of much controversy lately:

Hidden cost of mobile phones, computers, stereos and VCRs?

The ore, Columbite-tantalite, or coltan for short, isn’t perhaps as well known as some of the other resources and minerals. However, the demand for the highly prized tantalum that comes from the refined coltan has enormous impacts, as highlighted by a recent U.N. Security Council report where an expert panel was established on the illegal exploitation of natural resources and other forms of wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo:
Given the substantial increase in the price of coltan between late 1999 and late 2000, a period during which the world supply was decreasing while the demand was increasing, a kilo of coltan of average grade was estimated at $200. According to the estimates of professionals, the Rwandan army through Rwanda Metals was exporting at least 100 tons per month. The Panel estimates that the Rwandan army could have made $20 million per month, simply by selling the coltan that, on average, intermediaries buy from the small dealers at about $10 per kg. According to experts and dealers, at the highest estimates of all related costs (purchase and transport of the minerals), RPA must have made at least $250 million over a period of 18 months. This is substantial enough to finance the war. Here lies the vicious circle of the war. Coltan has permitted the Rwandan army to sustain its presence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The army has provided protection and security to the individuals and companies extracting the mineral. These have made money which is shared with the army, which in turn continues to provide the enabling environment to continue the exploitation.
— Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, United Nations Security Council, April 12, 2001.
The report also mentions Ugandan and Burundian rebels being involved in looting and smuggling of coltan, using illegal monopolies, forced labor, prisoners and even murder. According to the Industry Standard, “[t]hese accusations have not been taken lightly; several members of the U.N. panel that prepared the report have since received death threats. Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi have issued protests to the United Nations over the report, claiming it to be inaccurate and unfounded.”
A follow up report in October 2003 also noted that:
In 1999 and 2000 a sharp increase in the world prices of tantalum occurred, leading to a large increase in coltan production in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Part of that new production involved rebel groups and unscrupulous business people forcing farmers and their families to leave their land, or chasing people off land where coltan was found and forcing them to work in artisanal mines. As a result, the widespread destruction of agriculture and devastating social effects occurred, which in a number of instances where akin to slavery.
— Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, United Nations Security Council, S/2003/1027, October 28, 2003
What drives the demand for this mineral? Most of modern computer-based technology:
It [Tantalum, which is refined coltan] sells for $100 a pound, and it’s becoming increasingly vital to modern life. For the high-tech industry, tantalum is magic dust, a key component in everything from mobile phones made by Nokia and Ericsson and computer chips from Intel to Sony stereos and VCRs.
— Kristi Essick, Guns, Money and Cell Phones, The Industry Standard, Jun 11 2001
For more information on the resources and minerals and other backgrounders, you can start off at the following links:
Amnesty International details that there have been many human rights violations reported due to the economic exploitation. For example:
  • Thousands of Congolese civilians have been tortured and killed during military operations to secure mineral-rich lands.
  • Foreign forces from Rwanda and Uganda have promoted interethnic conflicts and mass killings as a means to secure mining zones.
  • Combatants of the various forces in the region have killed or tortured independent miners and traders for their minerals or money.
  • Many of the hundreds of thousands of inhabitants, driven from their homes into neighboring countries or other parts of the DRC, have died from malnutrition and lack of access to humanitarian assistance.
  • Children as young as 12 have been among those forced into hard labor in the mines.
  • Human rights defenders who have reported or criticized such abuses have been beaten, detained, forced to flee, or killed.
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Death Toll and the Effect on Civilians

As with most conflicts, civilians have suffered immensely.
The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has attempted a few surveys during the conflict. As of writing, their latest survey was up to April 2007, released in early 2008.
The IRC found that since the war started in 1998,
  • Some 5.4 million people have died in this conflict
  • It has been the world’s deadliest conflict since World War II
  • The vast majority have actually died from non-violent causes such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia and malnutrition—all typically preventable in normal circumstances, but have come about because of the conflict
  • Although 19% of the population, children account for 47% of the deaths
  • Some 45,000 continue to die each month
Although many have returned home as violence has slightly decreased, Refugees International says there are still some 1.5 million internally displaced or refugees
Unfortunately, the scale of death and destruction revealed is not new. While mainstream media reporting has been sparse and many are unaware of the sheer enormity of this conflict various organizations have been reporting about this problem since the very beginnings of the conflict.Human Rights Watch raised concerns in a report in May 2000.
In December 2000, Oxfam highlighted that over a million people have been killed due to the conflict in the initial two years.
By mid-2001, one of IRC’s earlier surveys estimated that there had already been around 2.5 million deaths since the outbreak of the fighting in August 1998, with the majority dying of malnutrition and disease that has resulted from the war.
By mid-2003, Amnesty International was reporting on the humantarian disaster of millions displaced and killed.
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Effects on the Environment and Wildlife

The coltan trade and battle over the other minerals and resources has also affected DRC’s wildlife and environment. National Parks that house endangered gorillas and other animals are often overrun to exploit minerals and resources. Increasing poverty and hunger from the war, as well as more people moving into these areas to exploit the minerals results in hunting more wildlife, such as apes, for bush meat. Gorillas, for example are already endangered species. Wars over resources like this makes the situation even worse.
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Does the World Care?

I am convinced now … that the lives of Congolese people no longer mean anything to anybody. Not to those who kill us like flies, our brothers who help kill us or those you call the international community.… Even God does not listen to our prayers any more and abandons us.
— Salvatore Bulamuzi, a member of the Lendu community whose parents, two wives and five children were all killed in recent attacks on the town of Bunia, north-eastern DRC. (Quoted from “Our brothers who help kill us”—economic exploitation and human rights abuses in the east, a report from Amnesty International, AFR 62/010/2003, April 1, 2003.)
Oxfam, mentioned above, criticized the international community in their 2000 report for still ignoring the DRC. When comparing with the response in Kosovo, they pointed out that “[i]n 1999, donor governments gave just $8 per person in the DRC, while providing $207 per person in response to the UN appeal for the former Yugoslavia. While it is clear that both regions have significant needs, there is little commitment to universal entitlement to humanitarian assistance.” (Emphasis added)
Oxfam also noted that “[t]he international community is essentially ignoring what has been deemed ‘Africa’s first world war.’ The DRC remains a forgotten emergency. Falling outside of the media spotlight, and experiencing persistent shortfalls in pledged humanitarian aid, the population of the DRC has been largely abandoned to struggle for their own survival.”
Slowly though, in some mainstream media, there have been questions of why international efforts are not seen here, especially when compared to that given to Kosovo.
An updated Oxfam report, while written back in 2001, also noted the following facts (some numbers may be out of date and have gotten worse, but the sheer scale of these numbers alone are shocking):
  • More than two million people are internally displaced; of these, over 50 per cent are in eastern DRC. More than one million of the displaced have received absolutely no outside assistance.
  • It is estimated that up to 2.5 million people in DRC have died since the outbreak of the war, many from preventable diseases.
  • At least 37 per cent of the population, approximately 18.5 million people, have no access to any kind of formal health care.
  • 16 million people have critical food needs.
  • There are 2,056 doctors for a population of 50 million; of these, 930 are in Kinshasa.
  • Infant mortality rates in the east of the country have in places reached 41 per cent per year.
  • Severe malnutrition rates among children under five have reached 30 per cent in some areas.
  • National maternal mortality is 1837 per 100,000 live births, one of the worst in the world. Rates as high as 3,000/100,000 live births have been recorded in eastern DRC.
  • DRC is ranked 152nd on the UNDP Human Development index of 174 countries: a fall of 12 places since 1992.
  • 2.5 million people in Kinshasa live on less than US$1 per day. In some parts of eastern DRC, people are living on US$0.18 per day.
  • 80 per cent of families in rural areas of the two Kivu Provinces have been displaced at least once in the past five years.
  • There are more than 10,000 child soldiers. Over 15 per cent of newly recruited combatants are children under the age of 18. A substantial number are under the age of 12.
  • Officially, between 800,000 and 900,000 children have been orphaned by AIDS.
  • 40 per cent of health infrastructure has been destroyed in Masisi, North Kivu.
  • Only 45 per cent of people have access to safe drinking water. In some rural areas, this is as low as three per cent.
  • Four out of ten children are not in school. 400,000 displaced children have no access to education.
  • Of 145,000 km of roads, no more than 2,500km are asphalt.
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More Information

For more on the conflict in this “Great Lakes” region, visit the following:
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Thursday, 7 April 2011

LIBYA TODAY

THE ROVING EYE

There's no business like war business

By Pepe Escobar

Lies, hypocrisy and hidden agendas. This is what United States President Barack Obama did not dwell on when explaining his Libya doctrine to America and the world. The mind boggles with so many black holes engulfing this splendid little war that is not a war (a "time-limited, scope-limited military action", as per the White House) - compounded with the inability of progressive thinking to condemn, at the same time, the ruthlessness of the Muammar Gaddafi regime and the Anglo French-American "humanitarian" bombing. United Nations Security Council resolution 1973 has worked like a Trojan horse, allowing the Anglo-French-American consortium - and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - to become the UN's air force in its support of an armed uprising. Apart from having nothing to do with protecting civilians, this arrangement is absolutely illegal in terms of international law. The inbuilt endgame, as even malnourished African kids know by now, but has never been acknowledged, is regime change. Lieutenant General Charles Bouchard of Canada, NATO's commander for Libya, may insist all he wants that the mission is purely designed to protect civilians. Yet those "innocent civilians" operating tanks and firing Kalashnikovs as part of a rag-tag wild bunch are in fact soldiers in a civil war - and the focus should be on whether NATO from now on will remain their air force, following the steps of the Anglo-French- American consortium. Incidentally, the "coalition of the wiling" fighting Libya consists of only 12 NATO members (out of 28) plus Qatar. This has absolutely nothing to do with an "international community".

The full verdict on the UN-mandated no-fly zone will have to wait for the emergence of a "rebel" government and the end of the civil war (if it ends soon). Then it will be possible to analyze how Tomahawking and bombing was ever justified; why civilians in Cyrenaica were "protected" while those in Tripoli were Tomahawked; what sort of "rebel" motley crew was "saved"; whether this whole thing was legal in the first place; how the resolution was a cover for regime change; how the love affair between the Libyan "revolutionaries" and the West may end in bloody divorce (remember Afghanistan); and which Western players stand to immensely profit from the wealth of a new, unified (or balkanized) Libya. For the moment at least, it's quite easy to identify the profiteers.

The Pentagon

Pentagon supremo Robert Gates said this weekend, with a straight face, there are only three repressive regimes in the whole Middle East: Iran, Syria and Libya. The Pentagon is taking out the weak link - Libya. The others were always key features of the neo-conservative take-out/evil list. Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Bahrain, etc are model democracies. As for this "now you see it, now you don't" war, the Pentagon is managing to fight it not once, but twice. It started with Africom - established under the George W Bush administration, beefed up under Obama, and rejected by scores of African governments, scholars and human rights organizations. Now the war is transitioning to NATO, which is essentially Pentagon rule over its European minions. This is Africom's first African war, conducted up to now by General Carter Ham out of his headquarters in un-African Stuttgart. Africom, as Horace Campbell, professor of African American studies and political science at Syracuse University puts it, is a scam; "fundamentally a front for US military contractors like Dyncorp, MPRI and KBR operating in Africa. US military planners who benefit from the revolving door of privatization of warfare are delighted by the opportunity to give Africom credibility under the facade of the Libyan intervention." Africom's Tomahawks also hit - metaphorically - the African Union (AU), which, unlike the Arab League, cannot be easily bought by the West. The Arab Gulf petro-monarchies all cheered the bombing - but not Egypt and Tunisia. Only five African countries are not subordinated to Africom; Libya is one of them, along with Sudan, Ivory Coast, Eritrea and Zimbabwe.

NATO

NATO's master plan is to rule the Mediterranean as a NATO lake. Under these "optics" (Pentagon speak) the Mediterranean is infinitely more important nowadays as a theater of war than AfPak. There are only three out of 20 nations on or in the Mediterranean that are not full members of NATO or allied with its "partnership" programs: Libya, Lebanon and Syria. Make no mistake; Syria is next. Lebanon is already under a NATO blockade since 2006. Now a blockade also applies to Libya. The US - via NATO - is just about to square the circle.

Saudi Arabia

What a deal. King Abdullah gets rid of his eternal foe Gaddafi. The House of Saud - in trademark abject fashion - bends over backwards for the West's benefit. The attention of world public opinion is diverted from the Saudis invading Bahrain to smash a legitimate, peaceful, pro-democracy protest movement.

The House of Saud sold the fiction that "the Arab League" as a whole voted for a no-fly zone. That is a lie; out of 22 members, only 11 were present at the vote; six are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. The House of Saud just needed to twist the arms of three more. Syria and Algeria were against it. Translation; only nine out of 22 Arab countries voted for the no-fly zone. Now Saudi Arabia can even order GCC head Abdulrahman al-Attiyah to say, with a straight face, "the Libyan system has lost its legitimacy." As for the "legitimate" House of Saud and the al-Khalifas in Bahrain, someone should induct them into the Humanitarian Hall of Fame.

Qatar

The hosts of the 2022 soccer World Cup sure know how to clinch a deal. Their Mirages are helping to bomb Libya while Doha gets ready to market eastern Libya oil. Qatar promptly became the first Arab nation to recognize the Libyan "rebels" as the only legitimate government of the country only one day after securing the oil marketing deal.



The 'rebels'

All the worthy democratic aspirations of the Libyan youth movement notwithstanding, the most organized opposition group happens to be the National Front for the Salvation of Libya - financed for years by the House of Saud, the CIA and French intelligence. The rebel "Interim Transitional National Council" is little else than the good ol' National Front, plus a few military defectors. This is the elite of the "innocent civilians" the "coalition" is "protecting". Right on cue, the "Interim Transitional National Council" has got a new finance minister, US-educated economist Ali Tarhouni. He disclosed that a bunch of Western countries gave them credit backed by Libya's sovereign fund, and the British allowed them to access $1.1 billion of Gaddafi's funds. This means the Anglo-French-American consortium - and now NATO - will only pay for the bombs. As war scams go this one is priceless; the West uses Libya's own cash to finance a bunch of opportunists Libyan rebels to fight the Libyan government. And on top of it the Americans, the Brits and the French feel the love for all that bombing. Neo-cons must be kicking themselves; why couldn't former US deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz come up with something like this for Iraq 2003?

The French

Oh la la, this could be material for a Proustian novel. The top spring collection in Paris catwalks is the President Nicolas Sarkozy fashion show - a no-fly zone model with Mirage/Rafale air strike accessories.
This fashion show was masterminded by Nouri Mesmari, Gaddafi's chief of protocol, who defected to France in October 2010. The Italian secret service leaked to selected media outlets how he did it. The role of the DGSE, the French secret service, has been more or less explained on paid website Maghreb Confidential. Essentially, the Benghazi revolt coq au vin had been simmering since November 2010. The cooks were Mesmari, air force colonel Abdullah Gehani, and the French secret service. Mesmari was called "Libyan WikiLeak", because he spilled over virtually every one of Gaddafi's military secrets. Sarkozy loved it - furious because Gaddafi had cancelled juicy contracts to buy Rafales (to replace his Mirages now being bombed) and French-built nuclear power plants. That explains why Sarkozy has been so gung ho into posing as the new Arab liberator, was the first leader of a European power to recognize the "rebels" (to the disgust of many at the European Union), and was the first to bomb Gaddafi's forces. These busts open the role of shameless self-promoting philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy, who's now frantically milking in the world's media that he phoned Sarkozy from Benghazi and awakened his humanitarian streak. Either Levy is a patsy, or a convenient "intellectual" cherry added to the already prepared bombing cake.

Terminator Sarkozy is unstoppable. He has just warned every single Arab ruler that they face Libya-style bombing if they crack down on protesters. He even said that the Ivory Coast was "next". Bahrain and Yemen, of course, are exempt. As for the US, it is once again supporting a military coup (it didn't work with Omar "Sheikh al-Torture" Suleiman in Egypt; maybe it will work in Libya).





Al-Qaeda

The oh so convenient bogeyman resurfaces. The Anglo-French-American consortium - and now NATO - are (again) fighting alongside al-Qaeda, represented by al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQM).
Libyan rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi - who has fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan - extensively confirmed to Italian media that he had personally recruited "around 25" jihadis from the Derna area in eastern Libya to fight against the US in Iraq; now "they are on the front lines in Adjabiya". This after Chad's president Idriss Deby stressed that AQM had raided military arsenals in Cyrenaica and may be now holding quite a few surface-to-air missiles. In early March, AQM publicly supported the "rebels". The ghost of Osama bin Laden must be pulling a Cheshire cat; once again he gets the Pentagon to work for him.

The water privatizers

Few in the West may know that Libya - along with Egypt - sits over the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer; that is, an ocean of extremely valuable fresh water. So yes, this "now you see it, now you don't" war is a crucial water war. Control of the aquifer is priceless - as in "rescuing" valuable natural resources from the "savages". This Water Pipelineistan - buried underground deep in the desert along 4,000 km - is the Great Man- Made River Project (GMMRP), which Gaddafi built for $25 billion without borrowing a single cent from the IMF or the World Bank (what a bad example for the developing world). The GMMRP supplies Tripoli, Benghazi and the whole Libyan coastline. The amount of water is estimated by scientists to be the equivalent to 200 years of water flowing down the Nile. Compare this to the so-called three sisters - Veolia (formerly Vivendi), Suez Ondeo (formerly Generale des Eaux) and Saur - the French companies that control over 40% of the global water market. All eyes must imperatively focus on whether these pipelines are bombed. An extremely possible scenario is that if they are, juicy "reconstruction" contracts will benefit France. That will be the final step to privatize all this - for the moment free - water. From shock doctrine to water doctrine.

Well, that's only a short list of profiteers - no one knows who'll get the oil - and the natural gas - in the end. Meanwhile, the (bombing) show must go on. There's no business like war business.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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