------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 14, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- McKINNEY HOLDS CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: EXPERTS BARE COVERT U.S. ROLE IN AFRICAN WARS By Monica Moorehead Even as international attention has been focused on the devastating, genocidal impact of the AIDS crisis on the African continent--and rightly so--the issue of covert U.S. intervention on the continent is being aired in surprising places, but with little media attention. It has been estimated that at least 36 million African people are suffering from AIDS. The widespread AIDS epidemic did not occur within an isolated vacuum. It is a direct outgrowth of centuries-old colonialism, neo-colonialism and present-day imperialism. That is what caused Africa, the richest continent in terms of mineral wealth, to become the most underdeveloped, super-exploited and poverty-stricken in the world. Africa was brutally carved up by the European capitalist countries several centuries ago because of its abundance of ivory, diamonds, gold, silver and other valuable resources. This full-scale plunder, coupled with the African slave trade, helped build up capitalism in Europe at a rapid pace and enriched the slave owners in the U.S. At the same time, this theft has left the overwhelming majority of the African continent with a lack of economic infrastructure to produce an adequate number of goods and services for what now numbers 600 million human beings. CYNTHIA MCKINNEY SPONSORS HEARING In April an important hearing took place on covert action in Africa by the most powerful imperialist countries, especially the U.S., in the post-colonial period. This meeting, which received hardly any media coverage, was sponsored by U.S. Congressmember Cynthia McKinney from Georgia, who is African American. A number of experts in African affairs offered testimony substantiating not only that Western imperialism is responsible for the dire situation in Africa today but that the U.S. is in the midst of a fierce, predatory struggle with its European junior partners for economic and political hegemony in Africa, all to control profitable markets. Referring to the speakers' information, McKinney stated in part, "Their investigations into the activities of Western governments and Western businessmen in post-colonial Africa provide clear evidence of the West's long-standing propensity for cruelty, avarice and treachery.... The West has, for decades, plundered Africa's wealth and permitted, and even assisted in slaughtering Africa's people. The West has been able to do this while still shrewdly cultivating the myth that much of Africa's problems today are African made. "We have all heard the usual Western defenses that Africa's problems are the fault of corrupt African administrations, the fault of centuries-old tribal hatreds, the fault of unsophisticated peoples rapidly entering a modern, high- technology world. But we know that those statements are all a lie." DEBEERS, SOUTH AFRICA AND THE U.S. Janine Farrell Roberts, author of the book "Blood Stained Diamonds," spoke on how the diamond industry has heavily influenced U.S. policy in Africa. She focused on the powerful DeBeers diamond corporation, which has dominated the economy in southern Africa, and one of its main representatives, Maurice Tempelsman. Tempelsman is a long-time diamond merchant who has been romantically linked to both Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and former Secretary of State Made leine Albright. DeBeers employed Tempelsman as a negotiator to broker deals with the U.S. As a result, Tempelsman sold millions of diamonds, a majority of them from Congo, to this country. When the first democratically elected prime minister of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, talked of using Congo's mineral wealth to benefit the people, the Central Intelligence Agency plotted to assassinate him. Following Lumumba's assassination, the U.S. government installed its stooge, Joseph Mobutu, as president of Congo. Tempelsman then became a "technical advisor and mediator" on behalf of DeBeers and other U.S. corporate interests, not only in Congo but also in Sierra Leone, Ghana and Angola. A number of speakers focused on the destabilization process that has taken place in central Africa--Congo, Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda--on the part of the European powers and especially the U.S. This process has outwardly taken on a military aspect, but underneath lies the insatiable goal of economic greed and plunder of Africa's resources. For instance, private military contractors have direct connections to the U.S. Department of Defense as well as some of the largest mining and oil corporations that exploit Africa. PMCs are in reality mercenary outfits that do the dirty work for big business in Africa. AMERICAN MINERAL FIELDS AND BARRICK GOLD One of the big corporations benefiting from these hired killers is American Minerals Fields, Inc., based in Hope, Ark. The major stockholders of AMF included several close associates of Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas. This mining conglomerate was instrumental in promoting Laurent-Desire Kabila to power in Congo as the head of a coalition backed by Rwandan and Ugandan troops. The U.S. thought it could use Kabila to further the interests of big business as opposed to the Congolese people. However, Kabila did not accept the role of puppet and was assassinated early this year on Jan. 16, the anniversary of the murder of Lumumba. Barrick Gold, Inc., based in Canada, is another major player in central Africa. Its international advisory board includes former U.S. president and CIA director George Bush. Barrick Gold and other mining industries are backing the partition of Congo into four zones by military means. Not only are these bandits in three-piece suits, based in Rwanda and Uganda, stealing the diamonds and gold from eastern Congo, but they are concentrating on pillaging valuable black sand called "col-tan" that is a vital material used in making computer chips. RESPONSIBILITY FOR MASSACRES These same big business interests are linked to the shooting down on April 6, 1994, of an airplane that carried the presidents of two Central African countries--Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana and Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira. Both were Hutus, and their deaths unleashed a genocidal war that cost the lives of 1.5 million Tutsis and Hutus in Rwanda and Congo. James R. Lyons, a retired FBI specialist on terrorism, testified that he had been sent to Africa by the State Department to be an investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. When his team assembled evidence showing that the shooting down of the plane had been carried out by the Rwandan Patriotic Front--which at the time of the crash was carrying out a war against the Rwandan government with covert U.S. support and is now in power--the investigation was shut down. Wayne Madsen, an investigative journa list who authored "Genocide and Covert Activities in Africa 1993-1999," confirmed that at the time of the downing of the plane the U.S. was secretly backing the RPF. The RPF leader, Paul Kagame, received military training at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The U.S. Defense Department has admitted that it provided training to the RPF in January 1994, three months before the April 6 incident. In his conclusion, Madsen stated, "Certain interests in the United States had reason to see Habyarimana and other pro- French leaders in central Africa out of the way. As recently written by Gilbert Ngijol, a former Assistant to the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations to Rwanda in 1994, the United States benefited economically from the loss of influence of French and Belgian mining interests in the central Africa and Great Lakes regions." - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. 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