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US Army Operated Secretly in Congo John Kakande 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. In a prepared testimony seen by Sunday Vision, Wayne Madsen, an American investigative journalist, said on May 17 that US Special forces have been training troops on both sides of the Congo war. He said US defence has at times been using Private Military Contractors (PMCs) to engage in these covert operations because PMCs are far from the reach of congressional investigators. Madsen is a specialist on intelligence and was also the author of "Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999", a work that took him three years of research and interviews in Rwanda, Uganda, France, the UK, USA, Belgium, Canada and the Netherlands. Madsen said the US military worked with Rwanda and the Congolese rebels to overthrow Mobutu. He said they again supported the rebellion against Laurent Kabila because "by 1998, the Kabila regime had become an irritant to the United States, North American mining interests, and Kabila's Ugandan and Rwandan patrons." He argued that when Kabila received assistance from other African countries, the US changed tactics. "US Special Operations personnel were involved in training troops on both sides of the war in the DRC - Rwandans, Ugandans, and Burundians (supporting the RCD factions) and Zimbabweans and Namibians (supporting the central government in Kinshasa," Madsen told the US congressional subcommittee. Testifying about the Mobutu overthrow, Madsen said: "One reason why Kabila's men advanced into the city so quickly was the technical assistance provided by the DIA (US Defence Intelligence Agency)." |
