To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Sent: Tue, December 28, 2010 6:02:39 AM
Subject: {UAH} Fwd: Museveni and Saleh used insecurity and armed conflict to
enrich themselves
Museveni and Saleh used insecurity and armed conflict to enrich themselves
Written by: The Editor on 27th December 2010
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni
Museveni’s memo on northern Uganda: In the SECOND part of his research into
Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s memo on Northern Uganda,
Prof Todd David Whitmore reveals how Museveni’s half-brother Gen Caleb
Akanandwaho aka Salim Saleh, used the insecurity both in Northern Uganda and
the
Democratic Republic of Congo to form companies that served as fronts for making
him and the Museveni family enormous riches. Read on:
The frequent justification offered by NRM and UPDF officials for the forced
displacement of the Acholi people is that it was to protect the latter. In
fact,
the name officials often give the camps is “protected villages.” However, such
justifications do not stand up to empirical scrutiny for the straightforward
fact that the NRM/UPDF did not adequately protect the camps, even when they had
the military capacity to do so. Instead, the camps served as LRA magnets, and
most of the worst massacres occurred in the camps. People I interviewed
confirmed this experience of being left vulnerable:
What experiences in Alero camp did you go through?
Yes, in Alero camp you were never safe. The rebels… attacked the camp. They
burned up people’s huts. They robbed things from people. In the camp, they
abducted people—both children and elders. Some of them have never come back.
They went with the rebels and we have never heard about them.
When the rebels came to Alero camp, where would be the government soldiers, the
military? Was the camp not protected by the military?
The government soldiers who were protecting us were few. Many times when these
people [the LRA] came, they [the government soldiers] ran away. They could not
protect the people in the camp, and the rebels would abduct people at will. The
rebels would burn houses at will. The rebels would do whatever they wanted at
will. While the camps were left vulnerable, Salim Saleh, the President’s
brother, moved to secure the freed-up land. The Acholi Religious Leaders Peace
Initiative reported on this activity as well
Soon after the forced removals of people from the countryside, Maj. Gen. Salim
Saleh started some kind of commercial farming business in Kilak country,
engaging people in this enterprise under conditions tantamount to exploitation,
since people were given money to engage in farming but had to repay double the
amount after the harvest. According to former MP of Cwa constituency Okello
Okello, “people were so desperate that many engaged in this kind of business.
Gen Caleb Akandwanaho aka 'Salim Saleh'
Saleh controls the Sobertra Construction Company in northern Uganda, which,
among other things, has built security roads that are off-limits to the
civilian
population. The anthropologist Sverker Finnstrom describes an encounter with
one
of the Sobertra vehicles, a truck with a heavy machine gun bolted in the back.
A
local Acholi commented to Finnstrom after the vehicle passed: They claim that
they are building roads, to destinations we don’t know…. Sometimes they behave
like soldiers, they drive Pajeros [a 4x4 SUV made by Mitsubishi]. The normal
people of Acholi, the indigenous people, are not allowed to reach that end
where
these people are working, for reasons best known to them. And this is the land
that even people who have gone into exile have faith and hope in, the land that
they hope will be for the future generation of Acholi [in keeping with the
tradition of customary tenure].
Where are the Sobertra Construction Company roads intended to go? Saleh’s
actions provide information. The land study cited above describes a 1998
project
“initiated by a senior army officer” to give loans to farmers to implement
mechanized farming on 250 acres of land in Amuru district in northern Uganda.
The hitch is that the actual landowner never gave consent for this project. The
officer? Salim Saleh. The report goes on to describe a 1999 proposal by “a
company for turning Northern Uganda into the breadbasket of central Africa.”
The
company’s proposal itself claims that there are “vast, highly fertile lands…
available for large scale grain production.” The company? Divinity Union Ltd.,
owned by Salim Saleh.
Two years later, the Acholi Religious Leaders Peace Initiative criticized the
Divinity Union proposal. “During our consultations with people in the camps
many
expressed the fear that the policy of putting the population of Acholi in camps
was a well-calculated move in order to grab their land. A project proposal two
years ago by the Divinity Union Ltd., owned by Major General Salim Saleh,
highlighted some large chunks of land in Acholi to be used for large-scale
commercial farming.” The situation with Saleh and Divinity Union, according to
the religious leaders, “deepens the already existing rift between the people of
Acholi and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Government.”
Undeterred by criticism from the Acholi religious leaders and other advocates
on
behalf of Acholi land rights, Saleh and Divinity Union proposed a “Security and
Production Programme” (SPP) in 2003. The Production Programme’s plan is for all
Acholi customary land “that is not tilled, being grazed on, or privately
registered” to be turned into militarized working farms, with local youth
recruited and trained by the government to protect the fields. Though the SPP
literature nods towards consultation with local traditional chiefs regarding
the
land, it states that the Production Programme is really a “government Project
Implementation Unit” to be run by the central administration offices, including
the Ministry of Defense.
Ostensibly proposed as a way to reduce population dependence on food aid during
the war, SPP, if implemented, would place all Acholi customary land not being
actively tilled under government control and have Acholi work the land not as
landowners but as low-wage laborers or quasi-serfs. Acholi Ministers of
Parliament and advocates have resisted the proposal, and it has not been
implemented thus far. For purposes of the memo under discussion, however, this
history underscores that the motives and actions on the part of both Museveni
and Saleh have been entirely consistent with the stated intent of “control” of
Acholi land as given in the memo.
Shortly after his displacement mandate for northern Uganda, Museveni committed
thousands of troops to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they could be
used to acquire not just land but diamonds, gold, and other gems and minerals.
The DRC case is informative for two reasons. First, it establishes a thoroughly
documented pattern of activity by Museveni and Saleh where they together
utilize
the Ugandan military for their own economic benefit in a way that directly
harms, often lethally, large numbers of civilians. Second, it shows that
Museveni and Saleh could have provided, had they wanted, sufficient military
support at the Ugandan IDP camps to protect the Acholi civilians, but that the
necessary forces were used elsewhere and for other purposes.
In 1997, Uganda helped Laurent-Desire Kabila push dictator Joseph-Desire Mobutu
from power in the DRC. Afterwards, however, Kabila requested that the Ugandan
forces leave the DRC. This action threatened Uganda’s interest in the DRC’s
natural resources, so in 1998 Uganda, according to a recent UN report, “created
and supported” a rebel military and political movement—the Mouvement pour la
liberation du Congo (MLC)—and found Jean-Pierre Bemba, the son of a Congolese
billionaire, to head it up. Between 1998 and 2002, Bemba gave the Ugandan
government mining concessions in the areas he controlled in exchange for
military support.
In 2002, a United Nations report specifically identified Saleh as a key player
in the illegal exploitation of minerals in the Democratic Republic of Congo by
the NRM. On top of that, Saleh was the primary shareholder of the Victoria
Group, which, according to the UN report, was involved in the production of
counterfeit Congolese francs. In other words, Saleh was having raw materials
illegally extracted from a war-torn country and then was purchasing the
materials with counterfeit money. In 2005, the International Court of Justice
(ICJ) found Uganda, again with Saleh specifically named, guilty of the illegal
extraction of raw materials and ordered it to pay the DRC $10 billion in
restitution, an amount that remains unpaid.
Importantly, the ICJ also found Uganda guilty of killings, torture, and other
atrocities committed on civilian Congolese, though the International Criminal
Court has yet to charge Saleh with war crimes or crimes against humanity.
Again,
his primary collaborator in the DRC was Jean-Pierre Bemba, who has since been
indicted by the ICC on four counts of war crimes and two counts of crimes
against humanity, but only for those crimes which he committed in the Central
African Republic. If the ICC chose to indict Bemba for his crimes in the DRC
itself, Saleh, given the ICJ judgment, would clearly be implicated, if not
charged. Like with northern Uganda, Saleh in the DRC was fomenting and using a
situation of insecurity and armed conflict to obtain personal and familial
wealth. He is, by most accounts, one of the wealthiest people in Uganda.
What the cases in DRC add to the discussion of Uganda thus far is that they
make
clear, by the ICJ’s own account, that the UPDF on behalf of Museveni and Saleh
is willing to commit violent and even lethal crimes against persons for the
purpose of securing wealth. The most recent report—October 2010—from the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights makes this abundantly clear. The
publication is a “mapping report” of the worst atrocities committed in the DRC
between 1993 and 2003. Included among its findings are multiple instances where
the UPDF or Congolese rebel factions operating with the support of the UPDF
committed acts that fit the legal definition of war crimes and crimes against
humanity. With regard to the town of Beni, for instance, the report states:
UPDF soldiers instituted a reign of terror for several years with complete
impunity. They carried out summary executions of civilians, arbitrarily
detained
large numbers of people, and subjected them to torture and various other cruel,
inhuman, or degrading treatments. They also introduced a particularly cruel
form
of detention, putting detainees in holes dug two or three metres deep into the
ground, where they were forced to live exposed to bad weather, with no
sanitation and on muddy ground.
In the Ituri district, UPDF forces backed ethnic Hema-Gegere militias and also
participated directly in what the UN report calls, unflinchingly, a “campaign
of
ethnic cleansing” against the Lendu people. For instance, the reports states:
Between June and December 1999, UPDF and APC soldiers killed an unknown number
of Lendu civilians in villages in the Djungu region close to concessions
claimed
by Hema-Gegere forces…. Numerous victims died when their village was set on
fire
or following heavy arms fire directed at their homes. Some victims were shot
dead at point-blank range.
The list of UPDF massacres of the Lendu people in Ituri district goes on:
* Between January and February 2001, UPDF soldiers attacked around 20
villages
in the Walendu Tatsi community [in Ituri], killing around 100 people, including
various Lendu citizens. During the attacks, the soldiers committed rape,
looted,
and caused an unknown number of people to disappear.
* On 3 February 2001, members of the Hema militias and UPDF troops
killed 105
people, including numerous Lendu civilians.
* In January 2002, UPDF troops and Hema militiamen opened fire on the
population of the village of Kobu… killing 35 Lendu civilians…. Those
responsible for the massacre were trying to remove Lendu populations from the
Kobu area, close to the Kilomoto gold mines.
* Between February and April 2002, elements of the UPDF and Hema
militiamen
killed several hundred Lendu civilians in the Walendu Bindi community in the
Irumu region. They also tortured and raped an unknown number of people.
The official response from the government of Uganda to the UN report chastises
its authors for overlooking Uganda’s contribution to “peace and security” in
the
region. However, like with northern Uganda, peace and security turn out not to
be the real reason for their presence at all. Indeed, when six members of the
International Committee of the Red Cross sought to bring humanitarian aid to
the
Lendu people, they were attacked and killed. Local sources interviewed by the
UN
pointed to UPDF soldiers and Hema militiamen. Moreover, when Uganda did seek to
unite the fracturing groups in the Ituri district, it did so by forcing the
various groups to join under a yet another Ugandan-created, Bemba-headed
politico-military movement, this time the Front de liberation du Congo (FLC).
In
other words, when local conflict threatened mineral exploitation, the Ugandan
government’s response in the DRC was to forcibly realign the splintering groups
under its own business partner, Jean-Pierre Bemba.
This last particular effort did not endure long, but the pattern of alliance of
convenience is clear. Indeed, by later 2002, Uganda switched sides to join with
the very parties—the DRC government and its militias—it had been battling for
years. Now the groups it was backing were massacring Hemacivilians. The 2010 UN
report comments, “The lure of money was one of the reasons why opposing groups
would suddenly join ranks or why the closest allies would unexpectedly turn
against each other.” This was the case around the town of Kisangani, where the
Ugandan army “obtained significant revenue from trading diamonds.” In Ituri
district, the prime lure was gold, which was, “exported through Uganda, then
re-exported as if it had been produced domestically—a similar model to that
used
for diamond exports.http://str8talkchronicle.com/?p=11284
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