Citizens:
I am going to post the article below in three of four parts..PRINT the article and READ it very carefully ..read it again and again.. comprehend the facts...and may be just may be you would be on your way to acquire wisdom and Knowledge ..especially regarding the Politics of the Great Lakes Region of Africa. Indeed, armed with this wisdom, nobody will decieve you in the days and year to come.
Good reading
MK
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Strategic Considerations of the
Rwandan Catastrophe of 1994
If one searches for the reason of the Rwandan catastrophe of 1994 strategic factors are more often neglected than acknowledged. But without taking them into account, the truth cannot be found. And justice becomes selective. While local actors are being punished, the often more powerful international culprits go untouched. The events in Rwanda in 1994 were not an internal armed conflict. They were caused by international intervention from the outside. To limit the discussion one-sidedly to the internal dynamics of Rwandan society and history neglects the fact that it were interventions from the outside, which set the conditions for the catastrophe to unfold and helped one side of the conflict to conduct its military operations. Western powers, most prominently the Anglo-American powers with the Francophone powers acting as competing junior partne rs, have caused the crisis in the Great Lakes region of Africa during the 1980s and 1990s in a twofold manner and are therefore responsible for the human catastrophe that followed.
Rwandan Catastrophe of 1994
If one searches for the reason of the Rwandan catastrophe of 1994 strategic factors are more often neglected than acknowledged. But without taking them into account, the truth cannot be found. And justice becomes selective. While local actors are being punished, the often more powerful international culprits go untouched. The events in Rwanda in 1994 were not an internal armed conflict. They were caused by international intervention from the outside. To limit the discussion one-sidedly to the internal dynamics of Rwandan society and history neglects the fact that it were interventions from the outside, which set the conditions for the catastrophe to unfold and helped one side of the conflict to conduct its military operations. Western powers, most prominently the Anglo-American powers with the Francophone powers acting as competing junior partne rs, have caused the crisis in the Great Lakes region of Africa during the 1980s and 1990s in a twofold manner and are therefore responsible for the human catastrophe that followed.
First, they ruined the region like the rest of the continent through the International Monetary Fund's (IMF's) structural adjustment policy economically. Secondly, they intervened with covert operations to manipulate simmering conflicts for the purpose of political controle. The combination of both led to the desaster in Rwanda in 1994. To understand this, the following strategic considerations must be taken into account:
1.. Events in Rwanda in 1994 have to be seen in the context of the war which started in 1990 and continued in the series of armed conflicts in the Central African region up to the present. It becomes clear that these conflicts are largly founded on a geopolitical strategy of Western powers, most prominently the United States and Great Britain, towards Africa, which can best be characterized as neocolonialist.
2.. The specific involvement of the US and British governments with the party which started the war in 1990, amounts to a far reaching political, if not juridical indictment of those governments for the criminal consequences of their actions.
3.. The economic conditions, imposed by the international financial institutions on the Habyarimana government destroyed the social fabric of Rwanda right at the time when war was launched against it, intensifying the sense of desperation among the population.
4.. The political struggle over the right of refugees to return turned into a violent powerstruggle and the ghosts of Rwanda's past, of the conflict between the majority and minority population groups, came back full force. The assassinations of three Hutu Presidents within a period of six months escalated the tensions to the bursting point.
5.. The Western powers never showed any serious committment to be the guarantor of the questionable Arusha peace agrement. After its breakdown, concious of its consequences, they decided against an intervention to stopp the carnage.
6.. Events in Rwanda and the region show, that the motivation for Western policy in Africa is not just interest in raw materials. It is also based in the devilish ideology of population controle.
7.. Those considerations show, that the often-disseminated theory, that events in Rwanda in 1994 were the result of one ethnic group having committed genocide against another ethnic group is not based on the totality of facts. Therefore, it is highly questionable to consider members of the political elite of this first group to be guilty of having committed genocide, because of their affiliation and government function. Such accusations become even more questionable in the case of Andre Ntagerura, who had been known for his pro-development commitment.
1. Anglo-American neocolonial desire.
The October 1, 1990 invasion of Rwanda from Uganda by troops calling themselves members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), started a process of devastating regional wars, which has not stopped to this day. In Rwanda the war resulted in the assumption of power by the RPF in July of 1994. Two years later Rwandan, Burundian and Ugandan troops invaded Zaire, erased the camps of refugees which had fled from Rwanda and Burundi in Zaire's Kivu province, and drove a so called rebel force, the Alliance of Democratic Forces (ADF), with its new leader Laurent Kabila, all the way to power in Kinshasa in May of 1997. One year later troops from Uganda and Rwanda again invaded Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, under the pretext of supporting rebel movements, the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD). The armies of Zimbabwe, Namibia and Angola intervened to save the Kinshasa government and in a stationary war faced the invading forces along a frontline dividing the Congo.
The Financial Times of London called this cynically "Africa's First World War".[1] The magnitude of human suffering and the loss of life goes far beyond anything the world has seen since World War II. A conservative estimate would put the number of dead resulting directly or indirectly from the conflicts in East/Central Africa in the last twelve years at more than 5 million. But they could be as many as 8 million. In the meantime, the Ugandan and Rwandan controlled rebel forces in Congo's East loot the country of its natural recources, especially diamonds and coltan, like never before.
How was it possible that after the end of the cold war in 1990, the world allowed this part of Africa to collapse to such debth of barbarism and suffering? Was not a peace dividend promised to the countries of the developing sector? And was Africa not supposed to receive a double dividend from the end of the cold war and of the apartheid system in South Africa? It would be naive to try to find answers to these questions in the local conditions. Africa has become the target of a dangerous new form of unilateralism which emerged after the Soviet Union disintegrated as a superpower. In Africa the Anglo-American alliance of Great Britain and the United States led this type of unilateralism to new extremes with old methods. The new extremes are the dimension of exploitation of the natural recources of Africa and of the devastation inflicted upon the population. The old methods are covert military and intelligence operations to exploit and manipu
late
local and regional conflicts for the purpose of political and economic control. The new unilateralism confronts Africa with an attempt by the Anglo-American establishment to recolonise the continent.
The British press led this discussion openly. One example is an article by Norman Stone in the August 18, 1996 edition of the Observer under the title "Why the Empire must strike back: Only a programme of 'enlightened re-imperialism' from Europe can put right the bloody mess made of its former colonies in Africa".[2] Stone argued:
"Liberian massacres have become so commonplace as not even to rate a casual news item. Somalia is a continuing mess, worsened by the absurd recent international antics to rescue it. No one seems to have any idea what might be done about Rwanda and Burundi, where the massacres go on.... Re-imperialism now begins to make sense again, and the Europeans would be in a good position to push through some sort of international mandate...Now with much of Africa a bloody mess, we are back to where we were before 'the Scramble of Africa' got underway in the 1880s....
"A hundred years ago, it would have seemed obvious to well-intentioned observers of the African scene that an international mandate should be given to civilized states to intervene in the maintenance of order. Empires do not have to be formal or tyrannical...There are times when they do good, and the post-independence history of Africa shows that this is one of them."
The hypocrisy, though, is that much of the "bloody mess" was created by Western policies of economic and financial injustice towards Africa which is inherent in the policies of the old Bretton Woods institutions World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF). And furthermore very often Western governments and secret services have bloody hands from intervening directly into the affairs of African nations. It took 40 years for the Belgian government to admit its involvement in the murder of Patrice Lumumba in Congo in January of 1962 and to apologize for it.[3] It took 30 years for the British Foreign Office to release the documents which show that Britain and Israel were the real force behind the 1971 Idi Amin coup against Milton Obote.[4] It does not need to take again 30 or 40 years until investigations show how the US and British governments were involved in the series of wars and powerchanges in Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo starting i
n
October of 1990. The evidence is already clear today.
In April and May of 2001 US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney sponsored hearings before the Subcommittee on International Operations and Human Rights Committee on International Relations on the humanitarian crisis in Central Africa.[5] In her opening statement McKinney said:"The accounts we are about to hear today assist us in understanding just why Africa is in the state it is in today. You will hear that at the heart of Africa's suffering is the West's, and most notably the United States' desire to access Africa's diamonds, oil, natural gas, and other precious resources. You will hear that the West, and most notably the United States, has set in motion a policy of oppression, destabilisation and tempered, not by moral principle, but by a ruthless desire to enrich itself on Africa's fabulous wealth. While falsely pretending to be the friends and allies of many African countries, many western nations, and I'm ashamed to say most notably the Un
ited
States, have in reality betrayed those countries' trust and instead, have relentlessly persued their own selfish military and economic policies. Western countries have incited rebellion against stable African governments by encouraging and even arming opposition parties and rebel groups to begin armed insurrection. The Western nations have even actively participated in the asssassination of duly elected and legitimate African Heads of State and replaced them with corrupted and malleable officials. Western nations have even encouraged and been complicit in the unlawful invasion by African nations into neighboring countries."
The hearings heard testimony how Commonwealth companies, such as American Mineral Fields, Inc. or Barick Gold, Inc., which counted former US President George Bush, sen., and former Canadian Prime Minister Mulroney as members of its International Advisory Board, were making deals about future mining rights with rebel forces in the Congo during the wars.[5a] The hearing discussed how the activities of these companies during the first Rwandan invasion of Congo/Zaire in 1996 overlapped the activities of US intelligence operatives in connection with the advance of Laurent Kabila's Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL). Such officials were from the US Embassies in Kinshasa, Kigali, and Kampala, as well as from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).
The hearing heard testimony how US covert operations supported the first Rwandan invasion of Congo in 1996 as well as the second one in 1998. Part of the support was an official US training program, called Enhanced International Military Education and Training (E-IMET) which was conducted for the RPF government in Kigali prior to the invasion of Congo-Zaire in October of 1996. But during the 1996/97 and again during the 1998 to the present campaign of the Rwandan and Ugandan military inside the Congo, covert operations of US forces including mercenaries or PMCs (Private Military Contractors) such as Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI) from Alexandria, Virginia, USA, played a critical role.[5b] Sources in the Great Lakes region have repeatedly reported the presence of black US soldiers among the Rwandan and rebell forces. The US Pentagon and intelligence agencies supposedly also supplied and still supply satellite and other intellig
ence to
the invading forces during the different phases of combat in Eastern Congo.
In summary, Wayne Madsen stated at the congressional hearing on May 17, 2001: "It is beyond time for the Congress to seriously examine the role of the United States in the genocide and civil wars of central Africa, as well as the role That PMCs currently play in other African trouble spots like Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, angola, Ethiopia, Sudan and Cabinda. At the very least, The United States, as the world's leading democracy, owes Africa at least the example of a critical self-inspection."[5b]
If it is so clearly established that US and British Commonwealth private and government interests were involved in those operations which the RPF government in Rwanda started for occupation of the Congo since 1994, the question arises, how deeply were they involved before that in the process from 1990 to 1994 when the RPF took power in Rwanda?
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