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 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 criminals to trial
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 .
I was very proud to write the preface to Glen Ford's book, The Black Agenda, which was published posthumously by OR Books. As we approach the first anniversary of Glen's passing, I endeavored to…
Glen Ford was among the speakers at a May 16, 2014 teach-in on Ukraine sponsored by the International Action Center. The event was held at The Riverside Church in New York City in the wake of the…
The U.S. reprises Iraq, inventing a WMD threat from Syria. The FBI concocts home-grown terror through stings, while the NSA claims it has secretly saved many lives. “Why this steady stream of…
An essay by the late Glen Ford recounts the perverse origin story of the twisted life and lies of Clarence Thomas.
As the late Glen Ford said, the Black misleadership class has no shame. Congresswoman Karen Bass's campaign for mayor of Los Angeles is full of empty promises. She proposes nothing that would…
