UNITE! Info #285en:

Black Star News on the Congo and Darfur

26.07.2007

Intro note:

On 24.07, Milton Allimadi <miltonallimadi@hotmail.com> of the Black Star News (published in New York City, the USA) mailed me the address of an article published at that publication's website on 23.07, "Tale Of Two Genocides - Congo And Darfur", together with the request: "Please post this and circulate it widely and e-mail to all your contacts."

I wrote him back saying that I had found, when glancing through the article, that it needed to be complemented with some comments.

In fact I hold that this article is quite good, bringing important information on one internationally "forgotten" genocide in particular, namely, that against the people in the DR Congo in the course of the aggression against that country, instigated by the US imperialists, from August 1998 on, but also that it does need to be complemented with a few comments, since on two not unimportant points, one concerning Rwanda and one concerning the Congo, it's in error. Including it now at my homepage in the form of this Info, which I shall also, as usual, post to some Usenet newsgroups, mailing lists and individual e-mail addresses, I'm adding comments by me within brackets [ ].

For earlier Infos of mine on the Congo in English (several in the time 1997-2002), see under "DR Congo" in my homepage section "Subjects in postings", and in French (two rather recent), see "Quelques textes en français". On Darfur, I've so far written nothing.

[QUOTE:]

Tale Of Two Genocides - Congo And Darfur

By Glen Ford
July 23rd, 2007

[Caption under picture - not shown here:]
Museveni, shown with Bush, and his US sponsors have caused the deaths of millions of Africans. When is enough enough?


Africa Commentary

As many as five million people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

A quarter million or so have perished in Darfur, western Sudan.

Both are abominations, genocides, crimes against humanity, but only Darfur rates coverage in the U.S. corporate media, action by the United States on the diplomatic and military front, or concerted interest by the Congressional Black Caucus.

The Congolese genocide, triggered directly by the U.S. and its surrogates, is masked in silence. In Darfur, "Arabs" who are indistinguishable from their Black African Muslim neighbors are demonized as enemies in the "clash of civilizations." 

Possibly a quarter million people have lost their lives in Darfur, western Sudan, in ethnic conflict. The U.S. government screams its head off in denunciation of genocide, in this case. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as many as five million have died since 1994 in overlapping convulsions of ethnic and state-sponsored massacre.

Not a word of reproach from Washington. A human death toll that approaches the Nazi's annihilation of Jews in World War Two - an ongoing holocaust - unfolds without a whiff of complaint from the superpower.

Why is mass death the cause of indignation and confrontation in Sudan, but exponentially more massive carnage in Congo unworthy of mention? The answer is simple: in Sudan, the U.S. has a geopolitical nemesis to confront: Arabs, and their Chinese business partners.

In the Congo, it is U.S allies and European and American corporate interests that benefit from the slaughter. Therefore, despite five million skeletons lying in the ground, there is no call to arms from the American government. It is they who set the genocidal Congolese machine in motion.

In 1994, Rwanda was on the brink. The Hutu majority, which had for a century been oppressed by Tutsi surrogates for European colonialists, feared that another massacre of their kin was imminent. There had been many massacres of Hutus, before, in Rwanda and neighboring Burundi, also under minority Tutsi control.

Pent-up hysteria exploded in an orgy of violence that claimed the lives of as many as 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus that did not support the genocide. The U.S. did nothing to interfere, because they had two actors in the game. Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni was now the Americans' guy in central Africa.

Tutsi Rwandan exiles, headed by Paul Kagame, were an integral part of Museveni's army. As the genocide began, Kagame's forces, which had invaded Rwanda in October 1990 from Uganda with Uganda’s support and financing, seized power.

It did not halt the massacre of Tutsis, but succeeded in driving the disorganized Hutus into neighboring Congo.
[Comment:

 The last few paragraphs here echo a story, concerning the events in Rwanda in 1994, which has been told and retold by the reactionary international mass media many times and which one only very rarely sees contradicted. There is however (at least) one article which does contradict it, namely, one by Remigius Kintu, "The Truth behind the Rwanda Tragedy", which was presented to the U.N. Tribunal on Rwanda, at Arusha, Tanzania, on 20.03.2005. It was later posted on the Congo-Tribune mailing list by Edward Mulindwa <mulindwa@look.ca>, and I reproduced it with some comments in my "NEWS ON CONGO 058" on 09.06.2005.

Although it's very difficult for me to ascertain what's the truth on this matter, those circumstances which are known to me, and also simple logic, strongly indicate, I hold, that it's Kintu's account that's basically correct and that the story in all the reactionary media is wildly wrong. Because of the importance of this matter, still today, I shall bring some relatively long quotes from Kintu's article here in this comment. After describing in detail the pre-history of the events in 1994 - which the reactionary media either are leaving out completely or else are misrepresenting - Kintu wrote i.a.:

"MASS KILLINGS IN RWANDA

In an ethnic conflict such as is the case in Rwanda, truth is the first victim especially, regarding the accused. We do not have to wait hundreds of years like Oedipus Rex to be told the bitter truth.

Thousands of innocent people were killed in Rwanda since October 1, 1990 when RPF [the party still in power in Rwanda today, led by strongman Paul Kagame - RM, 2007] invaded that country from Uganda. Between October 1, 1990 and April 1994, over 140,000 people were systematically killed by RPF/NRA [NRA: the Ugandan army, under the command of that other US-sponsored dictator, Yoweri Museveni - RM, 2007] in northern Rwanda, and over a million people were displaced rendering them to excruciating suffering without help from anywhere. ...
...

The evidence, based on revelations from NRA military and intelligence officers plus interviews of peasant refugees which our organization has collected point to Tutsis. The RPF, together with NRA and the United States are implicated very clearly as the greatest criminals of the Rwanda genocide.

Because of the lies and cover-ups which have been thoroughly concocted and orchestrated ever since the invasion started on October 1, 1990, the victims have been made to look like the criminals.  This criminal cabal has utilized tactics common to typical compulsive liars. The former UN Secretary General, Butros Butros Ghali, has often lamented over the fact that on many occasion he wanted to convene the Security Council to look into the Rwanda Crisis as it was unfolding in order to protect the lives of innocent civilians. Each time his efforts were thwarted by the USA and UK for reasons only known to their leaders. The USA went as far as training, arming, financing, and manipulating the international media in order to make the cabal’s criminal agenda prevail and succeed.

One does not have to graduate from a Military Academy to know that in war, the victor wins if it kills more of the enemy. If RPF and NRA defeated the Rwandese army, it goes without saying who killed more of whom.
...

Secondly, we look at the population of Rwanda which was about 7 million people at that time. Tutsis were about 10% about 700,000 people. Is the cabal’s propaganda machine trying to convince us that all Tutsis in Rwanda were mobilized to be in accessible locations so that murderous thugs could butcher them in a matter of days? Depicting Hutus as a collection of murderous thugs, when in fact they are the victims, and yet the German population was not so depicted after WWII is not only a skillful cover up of the truth but also an abomination of human reasoning. The Tutsis were always a minority in Rwanda. During the Hutu rule of Kayibanda and Habyarimana, there were many Tutsi attempts to invade and take power by force. There was no single time when Hutus ordered their army of civilians to butcher Tutsis. Yet in neighboring Burundi where Tutsi minority control the country, since 1960, there have been numerous pogroms of Hutus by ruling Tutsis which have claimed thousands of innocent Hutus. The UN has done nothing to bring the killers in Burundi to justice. Why?
...

If in fact the death toll was anywhere between 500,000 and a 1,000,000 people, and most of that killing took place in and around the city of Kigali, it absolutely impossible to have had that many Tutsis in the area. I personally visited Kigali and Ruhengyeri twice in March and August of 1993. I drove thorough the markets, hospitals, public car parks and around town. I could hardly count ten (10) Tutsis among those crowds – much as Tutsis are very conspicuous when among Hutus. The Hutus who reacted and indeed did kill some Tutsis could have responded to the misleading radio massages given out by the RPF killing machine which I have outlined above. Others may have reacted in anger in a manner no different from that of Black Americans after the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 or the barbaric treatment of Mr. Rodney King on April 29, 1992 in Los Angeles. We cannot blame the US government for both of those riots since they were natural reaction to a provocative tragedy. Besides, what would anyone expect people to react like when they are slaughtered by invaders and their government leaders have been killed by the enemy who is clearly known?

As soon as RPF came into power, they exhumed the skeletons of their victims from where they had hidden them. They collected the skeletons and paraded them all over Kigali and on roadsides throughout Rwanda to impress outside investigators so as to justify their criminal invasion of a Free State and murdering her citizens.
...
No one has ever questioned what could have motivated an entire population to run off from their land into exile, as was the case in Rwanda during those dark days. The cabal’s propaganda has blindfolded to believe what is unbelievable. Only fire at each one’s rare end can force a people to flee for their lives in such huge numbers. I find it very difficult to believe that all those skulls are what they claim to be. After all, no one can tell the difference between the skull of a Tutsi and that of a Hutu or a Chinese or German for that matter. ..."

These arguments by Remigius Kintu strongly indicate to me that in the present Black Star News article, Glen Ford instead of writing "As the genocide began, Kagame's forces, which had invaded Rwanda in October 1990 from Uganda with Uganda’s support and financing, seized power" should have written, more accurately, approximately:

"Kagame's forces, which had invaded Rwanda in October 1990 from Uganda with Uganda’s support, seized power and at the same time started the genocide."

- RM]
The Americans now had another player in the African game: the new head of the Rwandan Tutsi-dominated state, Paul Kagame. His forces then invaded eastern Congo, chasing the fleeing Hutus.

All hell broke loose. President Mobutu Sese Seko, America's man in the Congo, then called Zaire, was terminally ill. He fled and died in exile in 1997. The eastern Congo was now up for grabs, and everybody grabbed some.
[Comment:

No, that is certainly not what took place, in 1996-1997, which is the point in time referred to in this article. The forces of the Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame did not "invade eastern Congo", at that point in time. The eastern Congo, at that point in time, certainly did not become "up for grabs", nor did anybody - other than the Congolese people - "grab some", then. And the only ones for whom "all hell broke loose" in 1996-97, as far as the then Zaire - on 17.05.1997 renamed DR Congo - was concerned, that was the US imperialists and their (openly-appearing or more or less camouflaged) stooges.

What actually took place in the Congo in 1996-97 was a war of national liberation, in which the forces actually representing the interests of the Congolese people, the AFDL (Alliance des Forces démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo), skilfully led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila and utilizing as temporary allies also the reactionary regimes in Rwanda and Uganda. which supported that war of liberation with some troops in the (vain) hope that they might thereby gain control of the country, overthrew the 35-years-old dictatorship of Mobutu, achieving victory on 17.05.1997 after only some six months of armed struggle and - this was particularly important - soon set about to construct a really democratic and anti-imperialist, extremely modern, type of state, one based on Committees of the People's power in every neighbourhood and every village, and not on that actually old-fashioned parliamentarism which is the typical way for a bourgeois minority to rule.

How this new type of state was intended to function was explained very well in a speech by the then President of the DR Congo, L-D Kabila, on 21.01.1999, later reproduced in English translation by the small DR Congo Committee here in Sweden (today, unfortunately, existing almost only on paper) - see my  "NEWS ON CONGO 060". But that endeavour in the Congo, which set up a most positive example for countries elsewhere in Africa, and indeed in the whole world, was an absolute horror for the US imperialists and for all other imperialists too, and therefore they instigated a massive aggression against the DR Congo by the three neighbouring states Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, which began in August 1998, led to the occupation of half of the DR Congo by these states during many years, to enormous material devastation in the country and the deaths of some five million people there. Laurent-Désiré Kabila, clearly the best leader of any country in the last few decades, was foully assassinated on 16.01.2001 - see my Info #144en, part 1/2 and part 2/2 - and it's very obvious who it was that instigated that crime too: The government of the USA.

The present Black Star News article notes (see below) that eastern Congo is one of the most minerally rich places on Earth - and it can be added that, as recently confirmed, there are enormous deposits of oil and natural gas in the DR Congo too; see for instance item 275 of my "News with brief comments" series, 07.07.2007. But the main reason for the US(etc)-instigated aggression and genocide against the Congolese was not those riches, it's important to point out. It was their - the Congolese's - "intolerable affront" of daring to start constructing, already in 1997-98, the type of society which will later, after the entire imperialism has been beaten down in the world, become that of every country.

The imperialists today first of all are targeting, not raw materials including energy ones, and not competitors of theirs either, but the people, in all countries, whom they more and more desperately fear. As for oil, for instance, both the DR Congo and also Darfur have lots of it, but what the US imperialists today above all want concerning such oil, is to prevent its exploration and exploitation. One of several examples clearly showing this is their recently-instigated aggression against the likewise oil-rich Somalia, which, as pointed out in my Info #269en (of 17.01.2007), is very much "a war against oil", is a part of a global "green" warfare.

- RM]
Eastern Congo is one of the most minerally rich places on Earth, an extractors' paradise.

According to the CIA's "Factbook," the DRC abounds with "cobalt, copper, niobium, tantalum, petroleum, industrial and gem diamonds, gold, silver, zinc, manganese, tin, uranium, coal, hydropower, timber." All of these resources are exploited by European and American corporations that maintain their own mercenary armies to guard the extraction fields.

For generations they have run their patches of Congolese land like governments, with the support of France, Belgium, the United States and other powers.

The so-called civil war [actually an aggression, of course, instigated by the powers mentioned; it began, among other things, with some stooge forces of theirs being airlifted by way of Kigali, the Rwandan capital, into western DR Congo, temporarily even threatening the country's capital, Kinshasa - RM] effectively gave them full autonomy in the wake of Mobutu's corrupt demise, as the power of the central government in Kinshasa, crumbled. Mass carnage raged around them, but did not interrupt the extraction process.

In the thirteen years since Rwandan Tutsi Paul Kagame's forces - surrogates for the U.S. puppet president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni - invaded the eastern Congo, possibly five million people have died.
[Comment: Such indeed has been the death toll in the DR Congo. But here again, and rather strangely, the article - as is the "practice" today in many reactionary international mass media - confounds the US(etc)-instigated invasion of that country, which began in 1998, with the earlier war of liberation there, in 1996-97, in which Kagame's forces "happened to" play another another and opposite role, shrewdly being "co-opted" by the Kabila-led forces into supporting that war of liberation. The present article even has an "invasion" of the DR Congo beginning as far back as "thirteen years" ago, that is, in 1994 - clearly an error since hardly any Rwandan troops entered the country at that point in time. - RM]
President Bill Clinton, the man who stood aside [obviously, he actually did more than that - see the quotes from the article by Remigius Kintu in an earlier comment of mine - RM] while the Rwandan genocide took place, then presided over a far bigger mass murder in Congo. He has apologized for only one. In a visit to Kigali, capital of Rwanda, Clinton said:
 
"We come here today partly in recognition of the fact that we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred."  [Something which cannot even be called "an apology", since obviously, Clinton himself precisely was a main direct instigator of the mass murder in Rwanda in 1994.  - RM]
 
But what occurred is not over. The bloodshed spread rapidly to eastern Congo, unleashed by U.S. surrogate forces, and continues to this day. Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, has served U.S. imperial ambitions well.

He supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and continues to destabilize Congo with his forces in the eastern region. Multinational corporations, of course, operate their own airstrips and communications networks.

Their patches of Congo proceed like business as usual, while the death toll mounts by millions among the people, who are overrun by militias of various ethnicities and Kagame's Rwandan army.
[Comment: A continuing weakness of this Black Star News article, in my opinion, is that it paints the situation, politically, out a little more "black" - or "bleak", if you wish - than it really is. In its above account of armed struggle taking place in the Congo, it fails to mention some actions by some black people which certainly gave the imperialists a "black eye" or two - the victorious national-liberation struggle, and the beginning, at least, of efforts to build up a very modern-type state - and in the last paragraph here it fails to mention that the Congolese are not defenceless today either, that among those groups which might be called "militias", there are also the Mai-Mai forces in the eastern DR Congo, who consistently are defending the country's independence, confronting the continued incursions by Kagame's Rwandan army and by various mercenary groups, and that the government in Kinshasa - as far as I can make out - at least has not been subverted completely either, or even in the main, but is continuing, under the leadership of President Joseph Kabila, to resist the pressure from the imperialists too. - RM]

The Congolese genocide is not part of the American political discussion. When Africa is mentioned at all, it is about Darfur. A quarter million people have died there, compared to five million in Congo.

Both holocausts are crimes against humanity, but only the smaller one, Darfur, is a fit subject for inclusion in the U.S. political debate. During the June 3 CNN Democratic debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer demanded that the candidates "raise their hands" if they supported the imposition of a no-fly zone in Darfur - an act of war against the government in Khartoum according to international law.

Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Senator Mike Gravel declined to endorse the violation of Sudanese sovereignty.

In the following Republican debate, the consensus was almost unanimous, except for Rep. Ron Paul: impose a no-fly regime over the  western Sudan.
 
The Congressional Black Caucus follows the same script as Wolf Blitzer. Members have lobbied and demonstrated against the Sudanese regime, to the applause of the corporate press. But they have never said a word, as a body, about the hellacious carnage in Congo.

It is a taboo subject, too close to "vital American interests." But the Sudanese conflict is fair game, and so the Black Caucus joins in the general mob attack. They make common cause with imperial ambitions in the Horn of Africa, while ignoring the murder of millions in central Africa.
 
The preferred narrative of Darfur fits nicely with that of  the Israeli lobby in the United States. Although all the antagonists are Black Africans and Muslims, the aggressors are classified as "Arabs."

A regional inter-African, inter-Muslim conflict is made to appear as part of the "clash of civilizations" - the new Cold War. The proof is that the Chinese are partners with the Khartoum regime, having engaged in oil contracts.

The “evil Chinese menace” threatens American interests, and it follows that any country that deals with the Chinese is involved in an anti-American conspiracy. If they are Arabs (although black as my shoe), then the narrative is complete.

Arabs have collaborated with Chinese to kill Africans just as black as themselves. Let's declare war on them, beginning with a no-fly zone that violates their sovereignty.
 
The scenario is the same as Iraq: take control of their skies and the land beneath it, and bomb at will. Remove any semblance of government authority, under the guise of ending genocide. Extend the reach of the U.S. military's paws in the Sahel region.

The African Union has tried mightily to put an effective peace-keeping force on the ground in Darfur, but the United States and the Europeans refused to supply the logistical forces that are necessary; the C-130s to reinforce and supply the African troops.

The Americans and Europeans held out until the African contingent was at the breaking point, and then forced through the UN Security Council a plan to place 26,000 U.S. and European-led soldiers on the ground. Another piece of Africa will pass into foreign hands.

Darfur has been made into a stage-set of anti-Arab conflict, which perfectly suits the pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. Congo, where far more people have died, remains a gargantuan killing field, uncovered by the corporate media and ignored by the Congressional Black Caucus and the array of Democratic presidential candidates. Genocide depends on who is doing the killing, apparently.
[Comment: In which the author of course is quite right. - RM]


Glen Ford is executive editor of Black Agenda Report. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com

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[END OF QUOTE]





On the "UNITE! (etc) Info" posting series, see Note.

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