Over Five Million Dead in Congo?: How Truth
is Hidden, Even When it Seems to Be Told
by keith harmon snow
This article was originally published on Mr. snow's website,
All Things Pass.
"The long term control of Congo's resources is best
served by eliminating as many black people as possible."
The International Rescue Committee in late January
2008 released a new report on the mortality in the war-torn Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC). The report caught the eye of some news agencies, who quickly
whipped up trite little articles as supposed expressions of horror. Over and
over the DRC has been declared "the world's forgotten crises." There are
reasons why Darfur is the crises of the day, the poster crises, and why Congo
is hardly mentioned.
However, the story of war and plunder in Congo is not
unreported. It is a story that has been censored, manipulated, and covered up
even while it is ostensibly being told. Plenty of information has been
published about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and plenty of this
is flak, designed to whiteout the truth, and help keep the real story buried,
and that includes the truly honest representations of war and suffering in
Congo that have been published. Just because the mainstream doesn't cover it,
doesn't mean it didn't happen. This is the falsification of consciousness.
"The entire exercise in
counting the dead is another way to do little to stop it."
While the true death toll in Congo over the past series of
wars-for the Congolese it is one long contiguous war-will never be known, it is
far higher than the IRC figures. In the IRC's tidy statistical equations there
is no recounting the ordeal of the millions of people who have disappeared into
the swamps, the tropical forests, the mass graves, torture chambers and death
camps, or after crossing borders. The entire exercise in counting the dead is
another way to do little to stop it. The IRC is about profits, but that is not
all.
The International Rescue Committee has been described in the
past as the ideal instrument of psychological warfare, and it is. This is exactly
what is going on with the IRC today, and more, when the IRC-heavily subsidized
by the very same profiteers-sends its body counters into Congo. But the IRC is
not only the ideal instrument of psychological warfare, it is also the ideal
instrument of intelligence gathering. The International Rescue Committee
capitalizes on their access to refugee populations, conflict areas and
individual refugee encounters and interviews to gather intelligence on armed
groups, leadership, resources, weapons and geographical conflicts, information
that is selectively used to serve the greater interests of the IRC and its
partners.
America's Secret Warriors
Amongst the trustees or overseers of the International
Rescue Committee is Henry Kissinger, a man whose interests run very deep in
Congo. Henry Kissinger is tied to Freeport McMoRan (FXC) and FCX is all
over the copper and cobalt show in Katanga. FCX director J. Stapleton Roy was
Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research under Madeleine
Albright, 1999-2000, during the Clinton administration invasions of Rwanda
(1994) and then Congo/Zaire (1996); Roy retired to join Kissinger Associates.
"Henry Kissinger's
interests run very deep in Congo."
Another Kissinger Associates principal is Lawrence
Eagleburger, who has past affiliations with the defense and intelligence
insider Scowcroft Group, and has been a director of Halliburton Corporation
since 1998. Scowcroft Group founder Brent Scowcroft served
as the National Security Advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush
and, 1982-1989, he was Vice-Chairman of Kissinger Associates.
Walter Kansteiner, a National Security insider for the
Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations and a "principal member" of the Scowcroft
Group today, is a director of Moto Gold (operating in blood-drenched Ituri,
Congo) and of the military-based "conservation" organization, the Africa
Wildlife Foundation (Washington D.C.), that is backing mercenary activities in
the Congo's Virungas Mountains region under the cover of gorilla protection.
Another Kissinger Associates director is Belgium's Viscount
Etienne Davignon, one of the Congo's most lasting and current enemies. Davignon
was directly involved, 1964-1965, in the code-named "Dragon" operations that
installed the "kleptocrat" Mobutu and seeded the beginning of the end for
millions of Congolese people. Davignon is also a close
associate of Donald Rumsfeld through the bio-warfare production company Gilead
Sciences.
The IRC board includes Samantha Power, the Founder of the
Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard and Pulitzer-prize winning author of A
Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide, the book that peddles
genocide inflation on the one hand (regarding Rwanda, Yugoslavia and Sudan), and
genocide denial on the other (regarding Congo, Uganda and Rwanda).
The IRC "Freedom Award" for "extraordinary contributions to
the cause of refugees and human freedom" has been given to some of the genocide
inflators and deniers. In 1987 it went to John C. Whitehead and in 1992 to
Cyrus Vance, two men with historical ties to covert operations in Congo, for
example, through their National Security Agency and CIA insider status, and two
men tied to the Maurice Templesman empire behind the plunder of Congo/Zaire for
decades.
U.S. Congressman Donald Payne is one of those "friends of
Africa" who hangs in the Andrew Young and Maurice Templesman crowd. His role as
Ranking Member of the House Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and
International Operations during the Bush administration is one of his more
stellar performances, a sad disappointment and complete betrayal to Africans
and African-Americans.
In 1993 the "Freedom Award" went to Dwayne O. Andreas, the
Archers Daniels Midland executive and top U.S. congressional campaign funder
whose company makes sure there are starving refugees. ADM is deeply tied to
Robert Dole and Andrew Young, the latter counting ADM as his many top clients
at PR firm Goodworks International. Young is also deeply connected to the
client regimes in Rwanda and Uganda-the chief protagonists in the Congo wars.
In 1995 the IRC's "Freedom Award" went to Richard Holbrooke;
in 1996 to Madeleine Albright; and in 2004 to General Romeo Dallaire. All three
people were pivotal to the U.S. covert operations and the subsequent massive
refugee displacements and mortality in Central Africa. Holbrooke and Albright
are also culpable in crimes against humanity in former Yugoslavia, Haiti, Sudan
and Iraq.
"The ‘Freedom Award' went to Dwayne O. Andreas, the
Archers Daniels Midland executive and top U.S. congressional campaign funder
whose company makes sure there are starving refugees."
Finally, the "Freedom" award was shared in 2005 by William
J. Clinton and G.H.W. Bush; Clinton launched the wars in Rwanda and Congo with
the background support of his predecessor; Bush's "humanitarianism" includes
massive state destabilization, terror networks, torture, coups d'etat
and war on sovereign nations.
The International Rescue Committee is not a neutral or
purely "humanitarian" organization. The IRC has a deep history of nefarious
activities going far beyond relief operations. The IRC is also a huge financial
operation providing scads of executives and business people with scads of
income in ways that do not help to alleviate the war or suffering, but rather
exacerbate it. While the IRC claims 90% of its funds "are spent on refugee
programs and services," much of this money never hits the ground in Africa,
what does often barely touches the life of a refugee. Amongst the IRC's biggest
funders are HSBC bank, GE, and Goldman Sachs, all involved in Congo's blood
diamonds plunder, and Pfizer and Gilead Sciences (the Davignon-Rumsfeld
company). The IRC's involvement in Congo-a mortality study-involves deeply
political but generally hidden motives. Why doesn't the IRC focus on feeding
the living instead of counting the dead?
The Horror, The Horror
Beyond the simple calculus of the IRC's highly political
bias and interests, and cloaked in a smokescreen of neutrality, the mortality
assessment is flawed. The IRC considers only the period of 1998 to 2007,
excluding the first phase of the war, the U.S.-backed overthrow of Zaire and coup
d'etat against Mobutu Sese Seko, 1996-1998. The IRC excludes this period
for multiple reasons. (Requests to the IRC for comment were not answered.)
One of the obvious reasons is that the Pentagon was directly
involved, 1996-1998, along with the private U.S. military companies Military
Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), and Kellogg, Brown and Root
(Halliburton). Just as happened with the massive bloodletting in Rwanda, and
premised of course from the start on the examples of selective justice at the
Nazi Nuremburg trials, the international system manipulates statistics, dates,
and timeframes partly to shield those agents who might otherwise be subject to
some kind of future reckoning, and partly to serve the falsification of history
and fabricate a false consciousness.
The IRC excludes the period 1996-1997 to shield the
governments of now military President Paul Kagame, in Rwanda, and Yoweri
Museveni, in Uganda, and their inner circles and extended networks of
syndicated, organized crime.
"The Pentagon was directly involved, 1996-1998, along
with the private U.S. military companies Military Professional Resources
Incorporated (MPRI), and Kellogg, Brown and Root (Halliburton)."
In 1995 and 1996, the Rwandan Patriotic Army/Front (RPA/F)
and their partners and backers, the Ugandan People's Defense Forces (UPDF), the
Pentagon, MPRI and assorted other mercenaries, laid the groundwork for their
imminent war by engaging Zairian territory through significant cross-border
covert and terror operations from Uganda and Rwanda. In October 1996 there were
at least 1.5 million Rwandan and Burundian refugees in eastern Zaire, according
to most refugee agencies. The full-scale invasion began more formally when the
RPA/UPDF proxy forces shelled the refugee camps. This was in violation of
international humanitarian law, and it was a pivotal event to understand,
because it was a replay of the events of October 1990, whereby the RPA invaded
the territory of a sovereign government: Rwanda. Only this time it was eastern
Zaire, and it involved the shelling of Hutu refugee camps. These are egregious crimes of international law.
France reported at the time that there were 1.2 million
refugees and the United States insisted there were only 700,000, and the U.S.
took the disingenuous line that all the refugees went back to Rwanda. They did
not.
Hundreds of thousands of unarmed and innocent men, women and
children were driven west, north, and south, running in fear for their lives
from the allied invading forces who they knew from experience over the previous
six years to be bloodthirsty killers. Many also were forced back to Rwanda
where the RPA was targeting them. The RPA/UPDF forces hunted down and killed
hundreds of thousands in a clear case of genocide. The names of the U.S.
officials, the RPA and UPDF commanders and Congolese collaborators are all very
well known to those who were on the ground or involved at the time.
One of these is long-time UNICEF executive Nigel Fisher, who
is today also a member of the Advisory Council of the Diamond Development
Initiative, a program run by and for the diamond industry but meant to put a
reformative face on corporations and syndicated crime networks that for decades
have plundered the Congo. Fisher was the UNICEF Special Representative for
Rwanda in 1994, and he led that agency's post-genocide [sic] recovery
operations [sic] in the Great Lakes region of Africa (Rwanda, eastern Zaire,
western Tanzania and southern Uganda) in 1994-1995. This places him squarely in
the know about the massive genocidal killings and other crimes against humanity
that occurred as the Rwandan military (then the Rwandan Patriotic Army) under
current President Paul Kagame and the Ugandan military under President-for-life
Yoweri Museveni first shelled the refugee camps and then marched across Zaire
committing genocide.
So right off the bat we can add between 200,000 and 800,000
deaths to the new IRC mortality figures (and the 200,000 would be a very
conservative figure).
"The IRC has said nothing of substance about the parallel
economy of plunder that is enriching some of the same organizations that
support their ‘humanitarian' programs."
Finally, the IRC is known for its long history of
involvement in CIA and NSA activities, including shipping or transporting
weapons. According to a top United Nations investigator, the IRC moved
into bases in eastern Zaire in 1996 and started shelling the refugee camps with
heavy weapons. Here is the direct quote: "The IRC took over some bases near the
refugee camps and started shelling the camps with heavy weapons." (Name
withheld for confidentiality.)
The IRC has spent millions of dollars analyzing the "impact
of conflict" in the Democratic Republic of Congo but they have said nothing of
substance about the parallel economy of plunder that is enriching some of the
same organizations that support their "humanitarian" programs. Their recent
report is a glossy brochure offering a pornography of violence.
How stupid and blind do they think people are? How stupid
and blind are we?
At the same time, the IRC has received massive "loans"-in
the millions of dollars-over recent years from the U.S. taxpayer-funded
Overseas Private Investment Corporation. What happens to all these OPIC funds?
In the new IRC report about mortality in Congo there is not
a word about the causes of the ongoing strife or the structural factors which
have made this holocaust possible, and perpetuate it.
Things Go Better with Blood
Offering their only real reason for the high mortality
rates, the IRC states:
"Recovery from conflict is a slow and protracted process.
The persistent elevation of mortality more than four years after the official
end of the 1998-2002 war provides further evidence that recovery from conflict
can take many years, especially when superimposed on decades of political and
socioeconomic decline."
"Coca Cola trucks ship coke all over the place, even in
rural areas."
This is nonsense. When hurricane Katrina hit, it was, after
a brief delay, a rapid intervention process that established a chain of U.S.
military command posts across the gulf coast. Troops, helicopters, tanks, and
private military armies were quickly sent in, not to rescue people, but to
secure the facilities of the US military and defense contractors, shipyards,
banks and the high-end economic zone. It was all very efficient, hundreds of
millions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer's money was squandered on professional
killers who, fresh from Iraq and Afghanistan, did the only thing they seem to
know how to do, they killed people. But the point is that the U.S. government
moves mountains when it wants to, and quickly.
Recovery from conflict "is a slow and protracted process"
because there is an ongoing policy of intentional depopulation in Africa. The
United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) spends about 40-45% of its
billion dollar budget on airplane contracts flying around central Africa, and
this goes to big business. There is never any problem shipping in weapons,
and-offering a rather stark and poignant and undeniable example of the way
things work and don't-Coca Cola trucks ship coke all over the place, even in
rural areas. Full stop.
Think about it.
There are no books and no bookstores in Congo for a reason.
Starvation is widespread and there are food and grain shortages because of,
and not in spite of, the United Nations and the IRC and the World Food
Program and its ties to Robert Dole, Archers Daniels Midland, ConAgra and-a Henry
Kissinger link-Continental Grain. There are shortages of health supplies and
high rates of disease for a reason, and it is not because this is the "heart of
darkness" or any other racist foolishness.
Coca Cola is not a healthy beverage for malnourished and
starving children with no access to dental facilities. More importantly, Coke
director Donald F. McHenry is a President of the IRC Group, a Washington
DC consulting firm whose connections to the International Rescue Committee are
difficult to ascertain. Former Ambassador Andrew Young, Madeleine Albright,
George Soros, Lawrence Eagleburger, Frank Ferrari, Donald Easum, Donald F.
McHenry and Frank Carlucci all frequently surface like tentacles of the
Templesman diamonds octopus and most of these are tight with the intelligence
apparatus, and all have ties to the flak-producing CIA ciphers the
Africa-America Institute and the Corporate Council on Africa.
"The Museveni government has forced 1.3 million Acholi
people into death camps in northern Uganda."
IRC President and Director George Rupp is also a director of
the secretive and euphemistically named Partnership to Cut Hunger and Poverty
in Africa, a right-wing Judeo-Christian front organization. Other PCHPA
directors include Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Robert Dole and David
Beckman from the equally fundamentalist Christian front group Bread for the
World. The Museveni government has forced 1.3 million Acholi people into death
camps in northern Uganda and denied them humanitarian relief.
Starvation happens not because this is Africa, or the Congo,
it is because we are witnessing the most devastating example of predatory
capitalism and heartless, absolute greed, combined with a spiritual crises-in
the "first" world-of unprecedented proportions. The long term control of
Congo's resources is best served by eliminating as many black people as
possible. The capacity to control Congo's resources is enhanced by spreading
terror, uprooting people, destroying families, sowing distrust and hatred. It
is called divide and conquer and it is the oldest trick in the book of European
conquest. The word that best describes the portfolio of psychological,
emotional, physical, social, cultural and political effects of such campaigns
of destabilization and terror is DERACINATION.
And all the while the humanitarian "misery" industry is
raking in billions of dollars on programs to "help" the Congolese people, and
universities create new programs and departments to train the privileged
"development" work force, all to create and institutionalize dependency. This
is structural violence, and it is part of a cycle of perpetuated wealth and
privilege. It is managed inequality.
This is the U.S. foreign policy in action. The IRC merely
institutionalizes the false framework of thinking that supports war and plunder
and the entrenchment, rather than alleviation, of structural violence. Behind
the psychological warfare the picture in Congo is very different, and the
responsible forces are easily identified.
The Falsification of Consciousness
Here's how the system projects-and inculcates-the falsified
consciousness about Africa that people in the West are blinded by.
One of the long term dictator Mobutu Sese Seko's right-hand
men was Albert-Henri Buisine, a French
mercenary-pirate who worked on the Kamanyola, the luxury yacht where
Mobutu arrived by helicopter to receive foreign backers and "VIP" cronies.
While Mobutu frequently visited the White House, Brussels, Paris, Tokyo,
Geneva, London-and sometimes Tel Aviv-he regularly received his cronies and
patrons on his yacht in Zaire.
"Many of the agents of the Mobutu period are connected to
policies or actions that perpetuate suffering and violence in Congo and Angola
and South Africa today."
Protected by Albert-Henri Buisine and Israeli mercenary Meir
Meyouhas-and a slew of crack black intelligence operatives-Mobutu received his
guests Je me couche tôt. Hundreds of people
came and went from Zaire over the years, and these included Secretary of State
Henry Kissinger; Vice-President George H.W. Bush; Ambassadors Andrew Young and
Jean Kirkpatrick; and mercenary Frank Carlucci. Diamond tycoon Maurice
Templesman dined often with Mobutu on the Kamanyola, sometimes with his
lover, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, often with his Zaire-based diamond agents
like Jerry Funk or James Barnes, and with De Beers agents like Nicky
Oppenheimer or Nick Davenport.
The Templesman and De Beers empires exist today in Congo in
their modern forms, and many of the same agents of the Mobutu period are
connected to policies or actions that perpetuate suffering and violence in
Congo and Angola and South Africa today. It is important to note, also, that
the Templesman blood minerals machine has heavily subsidized the campaigns of
the democrats, including recent fascist manifestations, Barrack Obama and
Hillary Clinton. In the final counting, Hillary Clinton has done more damage to
Africa than Obama (but there is still time).
On May 11 and 12, 1990, Mobutu's shock troops-including the
Israeli-trained Special Presidential Division (DSP), SARM and National
Gendarmerie-attacked the campus at the University of Lumumbashi, and they
killed hundreds of students, at least, while countless more were tortured and
brutalized. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency station in Lumumbashi
supported the atrocities and cover-up. It sounds like a long time ago, but the
players are still around. Some, like James Barnes, Maurice and Leon Templesman,
and Nicky Oppenheimer, are still running big operations in Africa.
What was Albert-Henri Buisine's role in protecting the
Mobutu dictatorship and perpetuating such atrocities and where is Mobutu's old
mercenary bodyguard today?
Well, Mobutu's French mercenary bodyguard Albert-Henri
Buisine surfaced in October, 2007, in a Harper's magazine article by
Bryan Mealer, a journalist who formerly freelanced with the Associated Press
and The Independent (London). Buisine is no longer a private military
agent serving the terror apparatus of a Cold War dictator; he is the loquacious
captain of a barge pressing 2600 tons of cargo up the Congo River (for his
private shipping company and substantial personal profit). One hundred years
after Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness we have a white American AP
journalist retelling his unfathomable voyage up the Congo.
And there's the nostalgic Captain, a reluctant French
mercenary-terrorist-turned-pilot-profiteer, who for 16 years, against his will,
Mealer tells us, served Mobutu reluctantly. "He was chained to Mobutu's shadow
at all times, even living four straight years aboard the lavish presidential
yacht, the Kamanyola, as it drifted aimlessly down the Congo River."
Drifted aimlessly? Chained to Mobutu's shadow? Hardly. This
is fiction. There are deep cultural stereotypes and subliminal fault lines at
work here that have been inculcated through decades of propaganda about
Congo/Zaire. There is nothing but dross in Mealer's account, no mention of the
brutalities suffered by Congolese people, the strike-breaking and student
massacres, or the rented crowds chanting "Mobutu! Mobutu" and the empty slogans
of Mobutu's Movement Populaire de la Revolution party. There is no
mention of the hated Special Presidential Division terror apparatus, the
illegal arrests and detention without trial, the tortures at underground
dungeons like the "OAU-2" or the "corridor of death" in Kinshasa. It is all
rendered nostalgic, and the plunderers of the past are painted as unwitting
victims who missed their lot in life. The story casts the standard aspersions
of pathos on the white exploiters, and this works to displace the attention
from their past and often current criminality.
"Buisine now led the simple life of a river rat," Mealer
tells us, "making his run six or seven times a year," pointing out "whirlpools
roiling in the deep spots, crocodiles camouflaged in
the mud, or, along a wooded island, a tree whose leaves cured hemorrhoids."
"You cannot work in and out of Rwanda today and still be
telling the truth."
Harper's never mentions the agents of repression in such
places, because the American public is all too happy with the vainglorious
version of the beleaguered white hero challenging the savagery in the heart of
darkness. How many stories about Congo involve a River and a Great White Hero
challenging the savagery and darkness of the forest? Harper's tells us
nothing about Congo: it is the usual racist nonsense meant to displace the
truth. The story is "good" reading, but it is fiction, a mirror reflecting our
whiteness back to us. The author even claims that the natives communicate by
drums so that villages along the river know the boat is coming before Buisine
and the heroic white journalist arrive upstream. This is the falsification of
American consciousness.
To cap the Harper's silly whitewash, the photographer
that traveled up river with Mealer is based in Kigali, Rwanda, and everyone in
the region knows that you cannot work in and out of Rwanda today and still be
telling the truth. Finally, Harper's publisher John R. MacArthur is
described by his magazine company as a "tireless advocate for human rights."
And that is why we have more than 10 million dead in Congo
since 1996, and millions more in Uganda and Rwanda. These nightmare numbers are
the products of the Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations, a contiguous unfolding
of fascism in America.
I traveled on this river more than once: in 2007 I also swam
two-thirds of the way across it (at Lukutu, where I hit an island and turned
back); I also swam across the tributary Lomami (2007) and Lopori (2006) rivers.
The Harper's production mirrors the obliviousness of white men in Congo
and the even greater obliviousness of white editors, and it is all to satisfy
the voracious obliviousness of increasingly stupefied readers.
Been there, done that. Now it is time for us all to grow up.
Plantation Slavery in the Heartland
At the height of the supposed disintegration of
Zaire-mid-1980's through the mid-1990's-the Blattner family was rapidly
expanding their operations and consolidating power. The previous and already
vast empire in Zaire was established by James Blattner as the Group Agro
Pastoral (GAP), and this was later divided up amongst sons David and Elwyn
(Daniel's role in Congo is uncertain), who scooped up plantation after
plantation, concession after concession, becoming involved in transportation,
shipping, aviation, telecommunications, agriculture, logging and construction.
Elwyn Blattner's father-in-law, Shimon Razin, also runs a company, Safgaz, in
Congo, when he is not in Tel Aviv, and the Blattners send their children to
elite colleges in Europe. In 2003, Elwyn Blattner was President of the Communaute
Israelite de Kinshasa.
The Blattner empire today is perpetuating massive suffering
in the interior, with slavery and all the abominations of paramilitary fiefdoms
occurring on the Blattner plantations. None of this has been reported, but for those who wonder how the
mortality rate in the interior of the Congo could be so high-a sudden flash of
awakening with the release of the January 2008 International Rescue Committee
statistics-the answer lies in the capitalist enterprises of the Elwyn
Blattners, the Maurice Templesmans, the Etienne Davignons and Nicky
Oppenheimers, and the IRC itself. The Blattners frequently travel back and
forth from Congo to the United States, Belgium, Tel Aviv and South Africa. On
August 2, 2007, for example, David Blattner and family attended a lavish Bar
Mitzvah of friends in Israel held at the Sheraton Hotel in Tel Aviv. On the
same day, the second of August, 2007, at least 1500 people died in the Congo.
What is the IRC's relationship to the plantation
slave-drivers and how did the IRC statistically figure the higher mortality
rates on plantations run by the Blattner or George Forrest Groups in rural
Congo?
It Takes a Village
By the late 1990s, the guarding of the diamond concessions
in Zaire had ceased to operate under a single chain of command and had become
increasingly militarized by thugs of all stripes. Atrocities mounted during the
heaviest war years, but violence continues in these areas today.
Katanga has repeatedly been described as the province of
"forgotten strife." In the past decade alone, millions of people have been
dispossessed of their livelihoods, their land, their futures and their lives,
and the mining in Katanga and Mbuji-Mayi has been going on since the end of the
Leopold era.
"More than 5000 children have lived on the streets in the
center of Mbuji-Mayi town in the past few years-yet another generation of
Congolese leaders lost."
Entire villages have been sacked and burned by militias and
in some almost every woman has been raped during military campaigns of the past
few years. More than 5000 children have lived on the streets in the center
of Mbuji-Mayi town in the past few years-yet another generation of Congolese
leaders lost-and recent systematic massacres of street children have occurred
at the hands of militias, political groups and security forces.
How does the IRC mortality study factor in the deaths of
street children murdered in Mbuji Mayi?
After a century of exploitation and slavery, we find the
DRC's huge state diamond firm, MIBA, consistently withholding payment of
salaries to starving Congolese laborers and middle managers for months at a
time. April and May 2007 saw strikes and protests leading to the Kabila
government's arbitrary arrest, detention and torture of trade union organizers
like Leon Ngoy Bululu; police have also shot protestors. So-called ‘illegal' diamond workers-disenfranchised local
Congolese people forced into "criminal" activities to survive-were summarily
executed on MIBA concessions in Mbuji-Mayi. The BBC, in August 2006
reported that MIBA security guards were sniping unemployed diamond miners. Of course, the BBC never gives us the deeper story, it is
only for expedience and some interest somewhere that they are saying anything
revealing at all.
Katanga is the Democratic Republic of Congo's southernmost
province, and it is the world's richest mining metropolis, with the poorest
people in the world. Part of the vast copper belt that stretches across
northern Zambia and southern Congo, Katanga is home to unprecedented human
misery. The Zambian copperbelt concessions over the border involve many of the
same companies and interests mentioned above. But hundreds of billions of dollars are involved in these mining
projects and they have no problems moving heavy equipment into the most rural
areas, building runways, and shipping the product out.
Immediate and radical - going to the root of the problem -
interventions to aid the people and mitigate suffering in these areas could be
achieved if the corporations working there were held to account.
But as long as people in the West gobble up the corporate
do-nothing nonsense peddled by the IRC, CARE, Save the Children, Newsweek,
the New York Times, the BBC and the International Crises Group, it is,
indeed, hopeless.
Workers and communities in and around these mines suffer due
to state orchestrated repression, chemical mining processes and toxic runoff,
tuberculosis, immune disorders, racial discrimination and slavery. There are
all the standard treatable maladies (typhoid, malaria, tetanus, polio,
malnutrition) as well. However, such stories are off the agenda for the North
American, European, Japanese, Australian and Israeli media corporations
providing the mainstay of English language indoctrination meant to instill
racial superiority and a vast ignorance and obliviousness that leaves westerns
populations shaking their heads and wringing their hands and clicking their
tongues, while all the while wondering "what is to be done?" It does not cross
people's minds that their own hands are dirty, that their own consciousness has
been falsified, that change is possible.
Lies, Lies, Those Slippery
(Petroleum) Lies
German diplomat Albrecht Conze is the deputy political
director of the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC). In an
article in the German magazine Der Spiegel, after the first round of
elections in August 2006, Conze "predicted" the inevitable return of white
patronage in Congo. "It is like being the Congo's foster parents," Conze said,
suggesting that such patronage is a blessing, rather than the curse that it is
to the people of Congo. Conze continued to misrepresent the Western plunder in
Congo by saying, for example, that the U.S. government's interest in rebuilding
Congo is limited. After all, he said, the deeply Catholic country "contains
neither oil nor terrorists."
The above statement is consistent with the perpetual lies
by powerful interests who benefit by always downplaying or hiding Congo's
(Africa's) wealth.
"There is no doubt that Trillion and Chevron interests
supported certain factions in Congo's wars."
The first petroleum refinery in the Congo-owned by Societe
Congolaise Italienne de Raffinage (SOCIR), a joint venture between the
Congolese government and Ente Nazioale Idrocarburi, Italy's state-owned
petroleum company-commenced production near the mouth of the Congo River in
1967. Under a five year contract signed in 1967, the crude for the refinery was
supplied by Shell, Mobil, Petrofina and Texaco. Petroleum exploration occurred heavily off the Atlantic coast
after 1968; production began in 1976 involving Chevron, Mobil, Unocal,
Royal/Dutch Shell, Agip, TotalFinaElf, Teikoku Oil and the Japan National Oil
Company. Recent onshore exploitation near the refinery involves Total, Pan
Ocean Energy (UK) and Addax Petroleum (Canada).
The heartland of the Congo also has petroleum, and this is
part of the reason for the unfathomable terrorism involving Western enterprises
and agents and the concomitant rates of mortality in the interior. Petroleum
reserves were discovered (but left dormant) by Chevron in the Equateur
rainforest in the late 1970's. By 1997 this vast concession-known as Cuvette Centrale for
the former petit province-was held by Trillion Resources Ltd., established in
Vancouver in 1987. The company is involved in exploration throughout Africa in
association with Canadian mining companies such as Nickelodeon Minerals Inc.,
Oliver Gold Corporation and Skeena Resources Ltd. In DRC its activities have
also involved mining in Katanga with DRC parastatal Gecamines. There is
no doubt that Trillion and Chevron interests supported certain factions in
Congo's wars.
In Eastern DRC, petroleum under Lake Albert is being tapped
on the Ugandan side by Canada's Heritage Oil & Gas, Tullow Oil and Hardman
Resources, supported by the organized crime syndicates involved with the Uganda
"government," which is itself another syndicated crime ring run by the Ugandan
military, General James Kazini, and Museveni's half-brother Salim Saleh.
Further south near Goma and Bukavu, Lake Kivu is targeted by U.S. companies,
working through the current dictatorship in Rwanda, for its massive methane
reserves.
"This is an oil country," the new Congo's newly created Oil
Minister Lambert Mende was quoted by Reuters to say, "not because of our
current small production, but because there is major potential... Quite modestly,
we expect nothing less than three billion barrels of reserves, and it's
certainly more than that." Reuters in July 2007 confirmed that onshore
reserves remain untapped and largely unexplored in Equateur province in the
north as well as under Lake Albert and Lake Tanganyika along the eastern
border.
As always, the exploiters try to minimize the awareness of
the resources they are targeting. Contrary to the statement by MONUC's German diplomat
Albrecht Conze-as the Congolese, Rwandan and Ugandan people know all too
well-the "terrorists" are all over Central Africa, even if some of them have
never visited the country.
Conze's behavior epitomizes white supremacy masked by
"humanitarianism" and "peacekeeping" in Africa. The "peacekeeping"
operations of MONUC, like the "humanitarian" or misery industry, are merely
well-cloaked disguises for more predatory capitalism with the added
insidiousness of a supposed and self-righteous "higher moral purpose" that
allows the exploiters in the West to celebrate our "goodness" and our
"humanity" and to claim that our hands are clean and, of course, that we care.
But this is big business and nothing else. To question such things are
themselves written off as complete heresy, and that is why MONUC does not take
any notice of such writings as this one: good journalists produce tripe for Harper's,
they don't point the finger at modern day conquistadors and attach blame to the
names of U.N. officials, corporate executives, or high society philanthropists
and diamond tycoons.
"The ‘peacekeeping' operations of MONUC, like the
‘humanitarian' or misery industry, are merely well-cloaked disguises for more
predatory capitalism with the added insidiousness of a supposed and
self-righteous ‘higher moral purpose.'"
MONUC officials say nothing of substance about mining in
Congo, which proceeds in parallel with the bloodletting, arms trading and
extortion. For example, Anvil Mining has been involved in massacres in DRC. Anvil directors include former U.S. Ambassador Kenneth Brown, who
served at U.S. embassies in Brussels, Kinshasa, Congo-Brazzaville and South
Africa. Brown was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Africa (1987-1989)
under George Schultz and George H.W. Bush and Director of Central African
Affairs (1980-1981). Interestingly, Brown succeeded William Lacy Swing-head of
MONUC in DRC-as Ambassador to the Republic of Congo (Brazzaville). Meanwhile,
the former top internal intelligence and security chief of the United Nations
Observer's Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUC) has been worked
for Anvil mining in Katanga since 2006.
With top MONUC security officials taking high paying jobs
with companies involved in the atrocities, one begins to see the nature of an
organized, armed, free-for-all for Congo's resources.
This journalist reported in July 2007 that MONUC officials
were accepting kickbacks from warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba, and there is evidence
of MONUC collusion with other individuals capitalizing on war and plunder in
Congo. In December 2007, it was reported that a special task force for
the United Nations "uncovered a pervasive pattern of corruption and
mismanagement involving hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts for fuel,
food, construction and other materials used by U.N. peacekeeping operations."
But this is the tip of the iceberg and the United Nations
actions are weak and, often enough, meaningless. Finally, the MONUC mission in
Congo institutionalizes the inequality and suffering endured by Congolese
people by maintaining double standards about labor and employment packages
provided to MONUC employees who live in the host country: In August 2007 a
major "stop work" strike was undertaken by Congolese nationals in the MONUC
system due to the entrenched and continued injustices served on Congolese
people working for the mission, in comparison with the more comprehensive
employment packages provided to expatriate foreigners. The strike was almost
entirely unreported by the MONUC public information offices. The international
press-in keeping with their role as gatekeepers of suffering in
Congo-investigated nothing and, in the end, they only parroted the official
line.
Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles
The United Nations and European Union Forces (EUFOR)
involved in Congo are there to secure corporate resources and insure profits
through military domination. Yet the cover story is hammered into the Western
"news" consuming consciousness as a "humanitarian" or a "peacekeeping" mission.
Advanced technologies like Israel Aircraft Industries/Belgian
Hunter UAVs (Unmanned Aerospace Vehicles) intelligence platforms are now used
by Belgian defense forces in flying operations over Congo. Two UAVs have crashed in Kinshasa, killing one Congolese person
and wounding 10 others, and the Israeli-Belgian fleet has deployed three more
UAVs. Belgian Defense command indicates that the UAVs are to "collect information on road traffic and crowd
activities." But the statement is a
euphemism for maintaining the status quo of suffering, starvation, torture and
dispossession in Congo, while further enhancing foreign military domination and
expansion.
Three cheers for the rogue Congolese soldier with the
battered Kalashnikov AK-47 whose single shot at one of the EUFOR's robotic UAVs
flying overhead (at 1200 feet) penetrated the wing joint, pierced a structural
weak point and caused the wing to crumble and the UAV to crash. Of course, the
poor man has disappeared into the dungeons of hell in Kinshasa, and he will go
down in history as a criminal, rather than a hero whose expression of
frustration and misery manifested in shooting down a $10 million dollar Israeli
weapon with a pop gun.
The Belgian military described the man as a "lone gunmen
with a known criminal record." But the hubris of this statement defies articulation when we
remember the known criminal records of the white men involved in devastating Congo,
then Zaire, and now Congo, since the arrival of Henry Morton Stanley and his
blood-rubber and hand-chopping-off enterprises in the 1870's.
Where is the international rescue committee?
As of
January 2008 there are consistent reports of starvation in Kinshasa, and
reports of arbitrary arrest and illegal detention of men, women and children at
security facilities, including underground torture centers, and this is
certainly true all over the country. As of December 2007, those arrested as a
"security threat" and held incommunicado in these Kinshasa dungeons include:
Mimi Mboyo (19) and child (jailed 18 months); Angele (17) and child (jailed
>24 months); Mianda Kadogo (19) and child (jailed >11 months); Nicolette
Mukungu (20) and child (jailed 20 months); Bokungu (21); Olga (20) and child
(jailed 13 months); Edjoka (29). The main security facilities in Kinshasa are
Camp Tshiatshi, the Central Prison at Makala, Camp Kokolo, and the underground
dungeon known as "corridor of death."
keith harmon snow is an INDEPENDENT freelance
journalist and investigator entirely dependent on individual donations and
voluntary contributions. He has lived under the poverty line for over a decade,
and he has continues to work as a volunteer for three non-profit humanitarian
organizations. Without your support, he cannot continue to do this important
and insightful work. Contact him through his website, All Things Pass, http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php.
NOTES:
See: keith harmon snow, "Darfurism, Uganda, and U.S. War in
Africa," November 11, 2010,
<http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php>.
Biography, J. Stapleton Roy, Freeport McMoRan web site.
Major Thomas P. Odom, Dragon Operations: Hostage Rescues
in the Congo, 1964-1965, Leavenworth Papers No. 14, U.S. Army Command and
General Staff College (1988?),
<http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/odom/odom.asp>.
keith harmon snow, "Congo's President Joseph Kabila: Dynasty
or Travesty?" Toward Freedom, November 13, 2007, <http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1171/1/>.
See: Edward S. Herman, "Genocide Inflation is the Real
Threat," Z-Net, Oct. 26, 2007.
Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa,
1993-1999, Mellen Books, 1999.
See, e.g., Eric Thomas Chester, Covert Network: Progressives, the
International
Rescue Committee, and the CIA, M. E. Sharp, 1995.
On Mobutu in Tel Aviv see: "Mobutu and Israel," Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 15,
No. 1, Autumn, 1985: pp. 171-175.
Jerry Funk, Life is an
Excellent Adventure: An Irreverent Personal Odyssey, Trafford, 2003.
Bryan Mealer, "The River Is A Road: Searching for Peace in
Congo," Harper's, October 2007.
Kadima 010, June-September 2007, <http://74.52.200.226/~sefarad/kadima/kadima10.pdf>.
keith harmon snow, human rights research and investigations
in Congo, 2004-2007.
"DRC: Katanga's Forgotten Strife Displacing Thousands,"
IRIN, August 3, 2005.
What Future? Street Children in the Democratic Republic of
Congo,
Human Rights Watch, April 2006,
<http://hrw.org/reports/2006/drc0406/5.htm#_Toc129594720>.
See: "ICEM protests Congo's Transport, Diamond Injustices,"
International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Worker's Union,
May 7, 2007, <http://www.icem.org/en/78-ICEM-InBrief/2243-ICEM-protests-
Congo%E2%80%99s-Transport-Diamond-Injustices>.
"Diamond miners killed in DR Congo," BBC News, 7
August 2006, <http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:z9WCcOGeL8MJ:news.
bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/5254006.stm+%22MIBA%22+
%22illegal+miners%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=4>.
Personal investigation, Ndola, Zambia copperbelt mines,
2000.
Hans-Jürgen Schlamp, "Congo's Future: A Western Protectorate
in Africa?"
Speigel Online, Aug. 17, 2006.
Minerals Yearbook Area Reports: International 1968 Bureau of
Mines, 1970: 215-216.
Private investigations and site viewing, Mbandaka, DRC,
2007.
See: Annual Report of Consolidated Trillion, October
8, 1999. Trillion Resources was renamed Consolidated Trillion Resources in
1999, and it had merged with US.-based Viceroy
Explorations Ltd. by 2002.
Joe Bavier, "Congo to audit oil sector, first time in 10
years," Reuters, July 3, 2007.
Norm Dixon, "Congo Massacre: Australian mining company's
managers indicted," Green Left Review, November 4, 2006 <http://www.greenleft.org.au/2006/689/35790>.
His name is known, but he threatened to track down and break
the author's legs if he is revealed.
keith harmon snow, "Behind the Scenes: Warlord's Deadly Battle
in Congo," August 9, 2007, <http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1096/1/>.
Colum Lynch, "U.N.
Combats Peacekeeping Staff Corruption," Washington
Post, December 18, 2007.
"Local U.N. workers strike in Congo over conditions,"
Reuters, August 23, 2007.
Israel Aircraft Industries UAVs operate in 15 countries;
<www.iai.co.il>.
"Belgium Resumes Congo UAV Operations after Belgian-B is
Shot Down," Flight International, August 15, 2006. Israel's Rafael
Armament Authority is teamed with Lockheed-Martin and Northrop Grumman on
advanced missiles and aerospace productions: see Mark A. Loral et al, Going
Global? U.S. Government Policy and the Defense Aerospace Industry, RAND,
2002.
"IAI-Eagle-B Hunter UAV": http://belmilac.wetpaint.com/page/IAI+-+Eagle+B-Hunter+UAV+
(Unmanned+Aerial+Vehicle)?t=anon>.
Private
communications from Kinshasa, DRC, December 2007.
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