Yus

This article  was very educative. I did not realize hoe deeply involvved
USAas with Congo  then . Noo wonnder Mobutu ended where he deserves and
thannk Good for his end.

habib

>From: "Yusupha  C. Jow" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Gambia and related-issues mailing list
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: THE WESTERN HEART OF DARKNESS
>Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2002 16:59:36 EST
>
>By Asad Ismi
>
>Rarely has Western savagery been more destructive than in the Congo. After
>115 years of Belgian colonialism and U.S. neo-colonialism, the Democratic
>Republic of Congo (DRC) today is a war-ravaged, balkanized country where an
>incredible 2.5 million people have died and 2.3 million have been
>displaced.
>Oxfam calls this "the world's biggest humanitarian disaster." The
>catastrophic war which began in August 1998 has been imposed on the
>long-suffering Congolese by U.S. proxies Rwanda and Uganda, which have
>occupied the eastern half of the Congo and are plundering and looting it,
>with most of the proceeds going to the West.
>
>King Leopold and the CIA
>Genocide and plunder have been Western policy towards the mineral-rich
>Congo
>since the Berlin Conference of 1885 when European nations divided Africa
>between them, and King Leopold II of Belgium got the Congo as his personal
>property.
>Ten million Congolese were killed under Belgian rule, which lasted until
>1960. The Congo's population was cut in half. Belgian domination was marked
>by slavery, forced labour, and torture aimed at extracting the maximum
>amount
>of ivory and rubber from the Central African country. The people of the
>Congo
>"probably suffered more than any other colonized group." Their hands were
>cut
>off for not working hard enough, and on one day 1,000 severed hands were
>delivered in baskets to an official. Women were kidnapped to force their
>husbands to collect rubber sap, and Congolese were shot for sport.
>
>These atrocities were documented by George Washington Williams, an
>African-American visiting the Congo, who invented the term "crimes against
>humanity" to describe them.
>
>The U.S. took over the Congo from Belgium in 1960-61 in a bloody coup,
>after
>the CIA arranged the murder of Patrice Lumumba, the country's first elected
>leader. In his place, the CIA installed its paid agent, Colonel Mobutu Sese
>Seko, who continued the looting and killing started by King Leopold for
>another 37 years.
>
>The U.S. considered the socialist Lumumba to be pro-Soviet, and President
>Eisenhower himself approved his assassination. The CIA sent Sidney
>Gottlieb,
>its top scientist (under the code name "Joe from Paris"), to the Congo with
>deadly biological toxins to use on Lumumba. This particular assassination
>plot failed, but Lumumba was killed by Mobutu's troops on January 17, 1961.
>
>Until his ouster in 1997, Mobutu was Africa's most brutal and corrupt
>ruler.
>He massacred and tortured thousands of people, and plundered his country
>with
>U.S. backing. From 1965 to 1991, Zaire (as Mobutu renamed the Congo) got
>more
>than $1.5 billion in U.S. economic and military aid. In return, U.S.
>multinational corporations were given much larger shares of Zaire's
>abundant
>minerals.
>
>Washington justified its hold on the Congo with the pretext of
>anti-Communism, but its real interests were strategic and economic. The
>Congo
>borders nine African states and, in terms of mineral wealth, it is the
>richest country in Africa, holding the world's biggest copper, cobalt and
>cadmium deposits. The Congo contains 80% of the world's cobalt (essential
>for
>jet aviation, defense, and other high-tech production), 10% of its copper,
>and one-third of its diamonds, in addition to possessing considerable
>reserves of gold, uranium and manganese. Other resources include coltan
>(used
>in cell phones, jet engines and fibre optics), timber, oil, coffee, tin,
>zinc, and palm oil.
>
>A Balkanized Congo
>Mobutu's unlimited greed was his undoing. As long as he shared the looting
>with the U.S., Belgian, French, British, Dutch, and other Western
>corporations which dominated the Zairian economy, the U.S. supported him.
>But, as one observer put it, "when he kept too much for himself and became
>an
>embarrassment, the U.S. was ready to see him overthrown."
>In October 1996, the Rwandan army, along with Ugandan troops, invaded Zaire
>and by May 1997 had taken over the country and forced Mobutu to flee. To
>give
>the invasion the cover of a local rebellion, the Tutsi Rwandan forces
>called
>themselves the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of
>Congo-Zaire (ADFL), and recruited Laurent Kabila, an exiled Congolese
>Marxist
>opponent of Mobutu's, as a figurehead leader.
>
>As The Wall Street Journal put it, "Many Africans [concluded that] the
>Zairian rebellion was the brainchild of Washington from the very start."
>Rwanda and Uganda are the U.S.'s "staunchest allies in the region." Paul
>Kagame, the Rwandan leader, was trained at the U.S. Army Command and
>General
>Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. U.S. Special Forces had been
>training the Rwandan army since 1994 in counterinsurgency, combat and
>psychological operations. This included instructions about fighting in
>Zaire.
>
>Rwandan soldiers were also trained at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in
>July-August 1996 (just before the invasion), in land navigation, rifle
>marksmanship, patrolling, and small-unit leadership. Also in August 1996,
>Kagame visited Washington to discuss his concerns about Hutu refugee camps
>in
>eastern Zaire with U.S. officials. The Hutus are the majority ethnic group
>in
>Rwanda (85%), while Tutsis make up the other 15%.
>
>In April 1994, the Hutu government unleashed a genocide that killed 800,000
>Tutsis and 50,000 Hutus in 89 days. Kagame's Tutsi rebel force, the Rwanda
>Patriotic Army (RPA), then invaded Rwanda from Uganda and took power. A
>million Hutus fled to eastern Zaire. Kagame considered the Hutu refugee
>camps
>a "dangerous threat to his regime" because Hutu militia who had carried out
>the genocide were among the refugees.
>
>As one observer put it, "it was clear to the U.S...that Kagame was prepared
>to act and that this was certainly in the U.S. government's interest.."
>Once
>the Rwandans had installed Kabila in power, however, his relations with
>them
>quickly deteriorated. In July 1998, Kabila expelled Rwandan and Ugandan
>forces from the Congo. He cited as his reasons a failed assassination
>attempt
>against him, and the Rwandan army's killings of Hutu refugees.
>
>On August 2, Rwanda and Uganda invaded the Congo and occupied its eastern
>half, where they remain today, having set up surrogate "rebel" armies
>called
>Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD-Goma, created by Rwanda) and the
>Movement
>for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC, created by Uganda). Angola, Zimbabwe
>and Namibia sent their armies to support Kabila, and Burundi joined the
>Rwandans and Ugandans. Thus began "Africa's First World War," involving
>seven
>armies, which has killed 2.5 million people and further devastated a
>country
>crushed by more than a century of Western domination.
>
>This domination is being continued through Washington's use of Rwanda and
>Uganda to partition the Congo and loot its resources. The U.S. backed the
>Rwandan/Ugandan invasion of the Congo, according to Human Rights Watch. The
>Washington Post has reported that U.S. soldiers were sighted in the company
>of Rwandan troops in the Congo on July 23 and 24, 1998.
>
>Susan Rice, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs,
>pressured
>Kabila into signing the Lusaka Accord, which treated the conflict as a
>civil
>war and called for a step-by-step withdrawal of foreign troops (in 180
>days),
>rather than an immediate one. The result is a partitioned Congo, with
>Rwanda
>and Uganda still occupying the eastern half, having ignored all deadlines
>for
>leaving. The ceasefire is regularly violated.
>
>Kabila accepted the Lusaka Accord only because of the implicit U.S. threat
>that "refusal would be met by even greater assistance to the rebels and the
>potential dismantling of the entire country." This message was dramatically
>reinforced on January 17, 2001, when Laurent Kabila himself was
>assassinated
>on the same day that Lumumba had been, 40 years earlier. Joseph Kabila,
>Laurent's son, took over as President. Thus the U.S. has ensured continued
>Western dominance of the Congo by destroying the country itself as it
>existed
>when Mobutu was overthrown.
>
>Just as in the Berlin Conference of 1885, the West is again redrawing the
>Congo's boundaries, and this process is once more accompanied by plunder
>and
>large-scale killing.
>
>Armies of Business
>According to a UN report released in April 2001, Rwanda and Uganda are
>looting and plundering the resources of the eastern Congo and illegally
>exporting them to the West. The eastern Congo contains most of the
>country's
>minerals. The report, titled "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," details "mass-scale looting" and extraction carried
>out by Rwanda, Uganda, and Burundi in the occupied zones between September
>1998 and August 1999.
>During this time, the eastern Congo was "drained of existing stockpiles,
>including minerals, agricultural and forest products and livestock."
>Rwandan,
>Ugandan and Burundian soldiers visited banks, factories, farms, and storage
>facilities to remove their contents and load them into vehicles. In
>November
>1998, the Rwandan army transported seven years' worth of coltan stock
>(about
>1,500 tons) to Kigali (Rwanda's capital).
>
>Following the looting of stockpiles, Rwanda and Uganda have been extracting
>diamonds, gold, coltan, timber and coffee from the eastern Congo and
>illegally exporting these products to the West. Rwanda has made US$250
>million in 18 months from coltan exports alone. According to The Christian
>Science Monitor, every day cargo flights full of diamonds, gold and palm
>oil
>leave the Congo for Kigali and Kampala (Uganda's capital). Seven to ten
>such
>daily flights come into Kigali. Most of their cargo is loaded onto planes
>bound for Europe.
>
>Diamond exports from Rwanda and Uganda to the West have soared since 1998,
>yet neither country has any diamond mines within its own borders. During
>1999-2000, Uganda exported US$3 million worth of diamonds. Diamond dealers
>in
>the Congo provide US$2 million a year to the Rwandan army.
>
>The looting and extraction of resources has been accompanied by the
>"constitution of criminal cartels" in occupied areas, created or protected
>by
>top military commanders. The UN report blames Presidents Kagame and
>Museveni
>(of Uganda) for "indirectly giving criminal cartels a unique opportunity to
>organize and operate in this fragile and sensitive area." The document
>warns
>that these cartels, which have "ramifications and connections
>worldwide...represent the next serious security problem in the region."
>
>Significantly, the UN report points out that the illegal exploitation of
>the
>eastern Congo has been abetted by Western companies, governments,
>multilateral institutions, and diplomats. Rwanda's coltan exports are
>transported by Sabena, the Belgian national airline, while Citibank carries
>out the required financial transactions.
>
>Ramnik Kotecha, the U.S. Honourary Consul in the eastern Congo, promotes
>deals between Rwandan coltan sellers and U.S. companies. Uncertified timber
>from occupied Congo has been imported by companies in Belgium, Denmark,
>Japan, Switzerland, and the U.S. Western governments rewarded Rwanda for
>invading the Congo by doubling aid to the country from $26.1 million in
>1997
>to $51.5 million in 1999. The U.S., Britain, Denmark and Germany were the
>bilateral donors. Rwanda could thus spend more money on the war.
>
>The UN report also lists 35 companies illegally importing minerals from the
>eastern Congo through Rwanda, but does not give the national origin of
>these
>companies. Instead, the report specifies the destination of the material.
>Twenty-six of the companies' destinations are in the West. The firms
>include
>Cogem, Transintra, Issa, Finconcorde, Cogecom, Tradement, MDW, Sogem,
>Soger,
>Cogea, Finiming, Cicle, Eagleswing, Union-Transport, and Banro Resources, a
>Canadian company. Ten of the 35 companies are importing coltan to Belgium;
>three are importing the same resource to the Netherlands, three to Germany,
>two to Britain, and one to Switzerland.
>
>Along with plundering the eastern Congo, Rwanda and Uganda have committed
>"devastating human rights abuses," according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
>The
>Rwandan army and RCD Goma "have regularly slaughtered civilians in
>massacres
>and extrajudicial executions," as well as tortured and raped villagers. As
>Alison Des Forges of HRW put it in April 2001, "While Ugandan commanders
>were
>plundering gold, looting timber, exporting coffee and controlling illicit
>trade monopolies in the Ituri district, their troops were killing and
>otherwise abusing the local population."
>
>Uganda's encouragement of (and participation in) fighting between the Hema
>and Lendu ethnic groups has resulted in 7,400 deaths. Human rights
>violations
>are widespread on the Congolese government side, as well, including
>"indiscriminate attacks on civilians, extrajudicial executions [and] rape."
>
>Kabila's allies, Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia, are also profiting from the
>war. However, the Kabila regime itself cannot be accused of being a foreign
>military occupier; nor did it initiate the current war.
>
>Canadian companies
>Also benefiting from the war are ten Canadian mining companies with
>investments in the Congo. These are: Barrick Gold, American Mineral Fields
>(AMF), Tenke Mining, Banro Resource, Consolidated Trillion, First Quantum
>Minerals, International Panorama Resource, Melkior Resources, Samax Gold,
>and
>Starpoint Goldfields. These companies have been awarded valuable
>concessions
>in mining copper, cobalt, gold, platinum and zinc deposits.
>Even before Laurent Kabila came to power, he had signed deals with AMF and
>Tenke Mining. In March 1997, Jean Raymond Boulle, founder of AMF, signed a
>$1
>billion agreement with Kabila's rebel army to develop a zinc mine at
>Kipushi,
>and a cobalt venture in Kolwezi; Boulle also received approval to sell
>diamonds in Shaba province. As part of these arrangements, Boulle lent
>Kabila
>a leased jet.
>
>In early 1997, Kabila sent a representative to Toronto to speak to mining
>companies about "investment opportunites." According to Dale Grant, editor
>of
>Defence Policy Review, this trip "may have raised as much as $50 million to
>support Kabila's march on the capital of Kinshasa."
>
>On May 12, 1997, Tenke Mining announced that it had signed a deal with
>Kabila
>confirming the terms of a contract the company had previously signed with
>Mobutu's government in November 1996. At this point, Kabila had not yet
>taken
>power. The urgent need to finance the war had compelled the Congo
>government
>to reach quick agreements with mining companies over exploration rights.
>The
>companies can thus gain resources for less than they would in peace
>conditions.
>
>According to The Christian Science Monitor, Laurent Kabila "adopted a
>circle
>of Canadian advisers." One of the members of this "Congo inner circle" was
>Joe Clark, leader of the Progressive Conservative Party and former Canadian
>Prime Minister. In the mid-1990s, Clark became First Quantum Mineral's
>special adviser on Africa. He stated: "The government of Congo knows that,
>if
>it's going to make progress quickly in terms of using assets that create
>jobs, mining is more likely to do it than other sectors."
>
>Barrick Gold and Banro hold mining properties in eastern Congo under
>Rwandan/Ugandan control. Banro has 47 mining concessions in Sud Kivu and
>Maniema provinces, while Barrick got exploration and exploitation rights to
>"a huge tract of land" (82,000 sq.km) in Orientale province. As reported in
>Le Monde Diplomatique, Barrick and Banro have been accused of "funding
>military operations in exchange for lucrative contracts."
>
>Banro is also included in the UN list of companies involved in the illegal
>exploitation of the eastern Congo. The company is importing cassiterites
>(tin
>ores) from the rebel area into Canada.
>
>Heart of Darkness
>The destruction of the Congo says much more about the West than it does
>about
>the Central African country. It reveals most clearly that the West is
>guilty
>of participation in a criminal enterprise, the prosperity of which is based
>on the genocide of Third World people and the theft of their resources.
>The Congo is perhaps the worst example of this ruthless form of
>exploitation,
>but the West has followed the same policy in Asia, Africa and Latin America
>for centuries. In this sense, Western countries can be likened to an
>international Mafia led by a "godfather" (the United States government) for
>whom no amount of wealth, stolen or extorted from others, is ever enough.
>
>Today, the direct perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide are being tried in
>Tanzania. But the Western political and business leaders responsible for
>more
>than a century of genocide and plunder in the Congo are not being put on
>trial, or even accused. Their horrendous crimes against humanity continue
>to
>go unpunished.
>
>(Asad Ismi - [log in to unmask] - is a free-lance researcher who specializes
>in
>foreign investment and human rights issues. He dedicates this article to
>the
>memory of Patrice Lumumba.)
>Taken from The CCPA Monitor, October 2001
>http://www.policyalternatives
>
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