Rwandan War Criminals Defeated in Congo, But AFRICOM Riding High | Black Agenda Report

Rwandan War Criminals Defeated in Congo, But AFRICOM Riding High

06 Nov 2013

🖨️ Print Article

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

The military defeat of Rwandan-backed “rebels” in the eastern Congo is good news for a people who have suffered the worst genocide since World War Two. But will there be justice for the six million dead? “The United States would not relish a series of trials in which its own role in the slaughter of millions would be revealed in embarrassing detail.”

Rwandan War Criminals Defeated in Congo, But AFRICOM Riding High

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

“The U.S. has no intention of allowing anything approximating justice to break out in central Africa.”

After 17 years and the death of six million Congolese, the United States has finally shifted gears in its efforts to dominate central Africa. Earlier this year, Washington cut off military aid to Rwanda, which, along with Uganda, another U.S. ally, has been looting and terrorizing the mineral-rich eastern Congo since 1996. All those years, U.S. Democratic and Republican administrations have lavished arms and money on the two client states, and protected them from sanction by international forums and courts. The genocide in the Congo was central to U.S. policy in the region. While 8 percent of the Democratic Republic of Congo’s population was dying, Rwanda and Ugandan soldiers and thugs got rich acting as middlemen, funneling Congo’s precious minerals to multinational corporations. Meanwhile, both Rwanda and Uganda supplied soldiers to every U.S.-approved military mission on the continent, acting as America’s mercenaries in Africa.

So, why did the U.S. alter its policy? First, international pressure finally made it untenable for Washington to continue deploying its Black henchmen to destabilize central Africa. President Obama appointed former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold, a liberal by American standards, as his emissary to the Great Lakes region of Africa, and halted delivery of weapons to Rwanda. The Americans allowed the United Nations to form a special, 3,000-man intervention brigade empowered to use force against the so-called rebel group M23, which is actually led by the Tutsi-dominated government of Rwanda. This week, UN intervention forces backed up the Congolese army defeated the M23, sending its remnants fleeing across the Rwandan and Ugandan borders. The “rebels” announced they would end their insurgency.

“Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame cannot be expected to turn on his own men.”

However, Rwanda has pulled these tricks before, and has never acknowledged that M23 is its own creation, or that many of the fighters’ top officers are, in fact, members of the Rwandan armed forces. According to Friends of Congo, the Washington-based advocacy group, there is only one way to ensure that M23 will not resurface by some other name, and that is to bring these genocidal criminals to trial. However, this would require that Rwanda turn them over to the Democratic Republic of Congo or some international authority. Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame cannot be expected to turn on his own men, and the United States would not relish a series of trials in which its own role in the slaughter of millions would be revealed in embarrassing detail.

Therefore, although Washington has put distance between itself and Rwanda, the U.S. has no intention of allowing anything approximating justice to break out in central Africa. The U.S. military command, AFRICOM, has grown by leaps and bounds under President Obama – who has permanently stationed a brigade of U.S. troops in Africa – and the reinforced United Nations military presence in the region does exactly what the United States tells it to. And finally, at the end of the day, the Rwandan and Ugandan regimes understand that they are only cogs in the imperial machine, and must do as they are told. The U.S. empire is alive and growing in central Africa.

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.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20131106_gf_CONGO.mp3

More Stories

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Debra Thompson’s, “The Long Road Home”
07 Sep 2022
This week’s featured author is Debra Thompson. Thompson is the Canada Research Chair in Racial Inequality in Democratic Societies and Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University.…
Chi Chi Izundu, Mohamed Madi, Chelsea Bailey , Cooperation Jackson
Jackson Water Crisis: A legacy of environmental racism? and Justice for Jackson: Help Us Fix Jackson's Water System
07 Sep 2022
The city of Jackson is suffering from years of neglect by the state of Mississippi. Residents of the majority Black city need a new water system, but a legacy of racism and antipathy towards their…
Too Black
Laundering Black Rage
07 Sep 2022
Rage is a natural human emotion that is denied to Black people. Black rage is dangerous and is washed away, laundered, as if it were an ill-gotten gain. Too Black explains in the first part of a two-…
Mark P. Fancher
Reparations by Appeal to Conscience or by Demands from a Position of Strength?
07 Sep 2022
The pursuit of justice and reparations for African people has been constant. The question of whether to pursue appeals for concessions or active struggles for power, has not been resolved.
John Parker
Fact Find Mission to Donbass Part 3
07 Sep 2022
John Parker is the Socialist Unity Party candidate for U.S. Senate in California on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket. This is Part 3 of his report on his fact-finding trip observing …