Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

America and the Politics of Genocide in Africa
07 Nov 2012
🖨️ Print Article

 

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

Uganda threatened to pull out of the dirty war in Somalia unless it was afforded continued immunity for its mass murders in Congo. Washington is the Big Daddy of both bloodbaths. Within days, Uganda backed down, since a “withdrawal from Somalia would amount to going on strike against its employer, the United States.”

 

America and the Politics of Genocide in Africa

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

“The genocide in Congo is the deliberate result of American and British policy.”

On Tuesday, the vast majority of African Americans cast their votes for a man whose hands are soaked in the blood of millions of Congolese. Barack Obama, like his predecessors George Bush and Bill Clinton, has pulled the strings, paid the cash, and sent the weapons that Uganda and Rwanda have used to cause the deaths of six million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo since invading that country in 1996. Various organs of the United Nations have repeatedly found America’s two top allies in Black Africa complicit in the Congo genocide, and on every occasion, the U.S. and Great Britain have protected the mass murderers. And why not? The genocide in Congo is the deliberate result of American and British policy. Uganda and Rwanda are merely henchmen, who commit mass murder in return for a cut of Congo’s vast stores of mineral resources. Western businesses are the ultimate beneficiaries.

The International Court of Justice found Uganda guilty, in 2005, of killing and torturing Congolese civilians and plundering the country’s resources. Congo asked for $10 billion in reparations, but Uganda has paid nothing. Why should it? Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, was Ronald Reagan’s favorite African dictator and has served U.S. African policy, ever since. Uganda does not act on its own, but as a military asset of the United States. The same goes for Rwanda, which has been repeatedly cited for virtually annexing the eastern Congo in close collaboration with Ugandan forces. Rwanda President Paul Kagame acts as a puppet for U.S. policy in Africa, in return for lavish American military and economic aid and free rein to plunder and kill in the Congo.

Rwanda and Uganda are immune from international law because they do Washington’s bidding, sending troops wherever they are needed to buttress U.S. interests in Africa.

“What is a samurai without a lord and master?”

Last week, Uganda pitched a kind of puppet tantrum, threatening to pull its troops out of so-called peace-keeping duties in Somalia. Museveni’s government is angry, because yet another United Nations report has been leaked, showing that Ugandan and Rwandan military officers are directly in charge of the so-called rebels that are wreaking havoc in Congo. This is not a Congolese civil war, but a continuation of a 16-year aggression by its two neighbors, financed and directed by the United States and Britain.

Uganda’s threat to pull out of Somalia has proven to be empty. After all, what is a samurai without a lord and master? Uganda’s value to the United States lies in its willingness to kill other Africans on orders from Washington. A Uganda withdrawal from Somalia would amount to going on strike against its employer, the United States – a very dangerous thing to do. Besides, who else is going to employ the Ugandan and Rwandan mercenaries?

By the time the Uganda delegation got to New York, there was no more mention of leaving Somalia, much less a Ugandan disengagement from the U.S. Special Forces units that President Obama sent into the Great Lakes region, last year. Uganda had temporarily forgotten its place as a servant in the neocolonial scheme of things. But, in truth, the Ugandans and Rwandans need not worry about the U.S. cracking down on their genocidal activities in Congo, because that, too, serves America’s purpose: to control Africa by drowning it in chaos and blood.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20121107_gf_UgandaCongoSomalia.mp3

More Stories


  •  Linda Thomas-Greenfield
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    United Nations Negroz
    28 Feb 2024
    "United Nations Negroz" is the latest poem from our Poet-in-Residence, Raymond Nat Turner.
  • William Bass and railroad workers
    Joseph Sturgeon
    The Exploitation Zone: The Caribbean as a Site of Imperialist Extraction, Western Paradise, and Labor Exploitation
    28 Feb 2024
    From the moment the first colonizers arrived in the Caribbean, the West has treated the region as a treasure chest for resource extraction and labor exploitation.
  • Mumia Health update
    Julia Wright
    How to Resist the Deliberate Medical Neglect of Our Political Prisoners
    28 Feb 2024
    The state uses tactics such as medical neglect, to slowly assassinate political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal.
  • Rabbi Alam speaks at a rally
    Jacqueline Luqman , Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Recognizing the Revolutionary Potential of the Abandon Biden/Listen to Michigan Initiatives
    28 Feb 2024
    It is prudent for Black people to join in coalition with the Arab and Muslim people collectively refusing to support President Biden and connect the struggle for Palestinian liberation to the…
  • Belgian colonialism in Congo.
    Abayomi Azikiwe
    Pan-African Struggles Against Colonialism and the First Imperialist War: 1876-1919
    28 Feb 2024
    From the decline of the triangular trade to the rapacious extraction of mineral resources and labor exploitation, Africans have organized and revolted against western domination.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us