Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
June
17, 2003
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
June
16, 2003
Frida
Berrigan
Death in Aceh: US Weapon Aid the
Repression
Publius
Candidate Dem and Citizen Green
Tarif
Abboushi
Roadmap or Roadkill?
Rep. John
Conyers
Bush's Deceptions about Iraq Threaten Democracy at Home
Julian
Samuel
A Review of Pilger's The New Rulers of the World
Uri
Avnery
The Children of Death
Steve
Perry
Bush's Lies,
Part 2
June
14 / 15, 2003
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
June
13, 2003
David
Vest
Bush
Roadmap to What?
Ron Jacobs
The Iranian Revolution, Reloaded?
John
Chuckman
The Man Who Wasn't There
Jason Leopold
Six Months Before War White House Silenced Critics of WMD Intelligence
Michael
Leon
Missing Weapons, Shrinking Bush and the Media
Negar Azimi
Ashcroft's Cruel Version of America
Saul
Landau
Shiite Happens
Hammond
Guthrie
Then and Now
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/13
June
12, 2003
Gary
Leupp
The Intel-gate Row in Britain: a Chronology
Ahmad Faruqui
The Tragic Legacy of the Six Day
War
Wayne
Madsen
Unfit for Office: Time for Rumsfeld to Resign
Laura Carlsen
Hunger and Security
Tarif
Abboushi
Warm and Fuzzy in Aqaba
Ray
McGovern
Deceived into War: Reflections of
a Former CIA Analyst
Steve
Perry
Counting Bush's
Lies, part 2
June
11, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Attack of the Hog Killers: Why the
Generals Hate the A-10
Elaine
Cassel
Meet Michael Chertoff: Ashcroft's
Top Gremlin
David Lindorff
The Republican Drive to Eliminate Overtime Pay
Tom
Gorman
Greens, the Antiwar Movement and 2004
Alfredo
Castro
Colombia: The Most Dangerous Place
on Earth for Trade Unionists
Nnimo
Bassey and Lawrence Bohlen
Bush Must Stop Telling Us What to
Eat!
Julie Hilden
Spike Lee v. Spike TV
CounterPunch
Wire
Blair Bros. Change Jobs!
Eric
Hobsbawm
The Empire Expands, Wider and Still
Wider
Steve
Perry
DHS: As Big
a Planning Snafu as Iraq?
June
10, 2003
Benjamin
Shepard
A Season in the Anti-War Movement
Chris
Floyd
Bush Family Lies About Iraq and Nazi
Germany
Wayne
Madsen
Weaponsgate
Jason Leopold
Powell's Denials Ring Hollow
Richard
Lichtman
Whining, Whimpering Leftists Confront the Logic of American World
Domination
Ray
Close
A CIA Analyst on Why the Lies About
WMD Matter
Hammond
Guthrie
Banking on Saddam?
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars
Web Log 6/10
June
9, 2003
Alex
Coolman
Male Rape in US Prisons
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft is Coming!
Lee
Sustar
Is Iran Next?
Agustin
Velloso
Equatorial Guinea: Few Rich, Many
Poor
Gila
Svirsky
Some Lives Are Worth Less Than Others
Dr. Gerry
Lower
Human Worth in Bush's America
Michael
S. Ladah
A True Liberation
Ishmael Reed
Iraqi Slaughter, Mayhem and Plunder
Steve
Perry
How to Beat Bush, part 1
June
7 / 8, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
The Terrible Truth
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Going Critical: Bush's War on Endangered Species
Joanne
Mariner
Ashcrofts Sides with Torturers
Steven
Sherman
A Different Theory of Everything
Ron Jacobs
Sports, Politics and the 60s
M.
Shahid Alam
Pauperizing the Periphery
Amelia
Peltz
If This is the Road, I'd Rather be Lost
Shelton
Hull
Another Powell, Another Capitulation
Binoy Kampmark
Nuclear Deterrence and North Korea
Ben
Tripp
A Fish Story
Sen. Robert
Byrd
Where is the Outrage?
Robin
Philpot
Congo Distortions
Julie Hilden
Murder and the Matrix
Laura
Flanders
An Interview with Isabel Allende
David Lindorff
The Last Byline
Adam
Engel
Talk Dirty Scary Monsters
Poets'
Basement
Kearney, Reiss, Guthrie, Albert and Hamod
June
6, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft the Insatiable
David
Krieger
The Big Lie
Ramzy
Baroud
Sharon and the Myth of the Peacemakers
Anthony
Gancarski
Sharansky: "Crucifixion is a Privilege"
Sam
Hamod
His Own Little Country
Sean Carter
Why Indict Martha Stewart and Not Ken Lay?
David
Lindorff
Cracks in the Consensus
Stew Albert
Ari's Great Set
Steve
Perry
Greens and
Moore in 04? No
June
5, 2003
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pools of Fire: The Looming Nuclear
Nightmare in the Woods of North Carolina
Imraan
Siddiqi
Ann Coulter's Foul Mouth
Michael
Leon
Clinton, Reno & Waco: Remember What They've Done
Robert
Jensen
Texas Pledge Law Undermines Democracy
Ann Harrison
Rosenthal is Free, But the Fight isn't Over
Paul
Dean
How You Can Be Deliriously Happy in the Age of Bush
Gary Leupp
When Spooks Speak Out
Website
of the Day
Evidence in Black and White?
Hot Stories
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
June
18, 2003
Ignoring the World's
Bloodiest War
What's
Behind the Killing in Central Africa?
By CHRIS FAGEN
When the mainstream press pays any attention to
the Congo--or African wars in general--they invariably characterize
the conflicts as "ethnic" or "tribal" wars,
rooted in age-old hatreds. This explanation is not only false,
but racist.
It provides cover for the argument that
"we"--invariably some mix of Western nations, perhaps
with UN cover--must intervene to stop this irrational ethnic
murder. This argument is a repackaged version of the same racist
excuses given for European powers' conquest and colonization
of Africa in the late 19th century--that is, to "civilize"
the continent. Any prospect of resolving the Congo war requires
a much different framework--one that doesn't look to the architects
of the crisis to solve it.
It is the case that the militias fighting
over Bunia are based in two distinct groups, the Hema and the
Lendu. As with many civil conflicts in modern Africa, ethnicity
provides a mobilizing lever for politicians, just as it did in
the Balkans wars in Europe in the 1990s. But the Congo war--including
this latest episode, is about far more than ethnicity or regional
politics.
It's the legacy of brutal Belgian colonial
rule, the Cold War and U.S. and European imperialism--all aimed
at controlling the Congo's massive mineral wealth.
In the European carve-up of Africa, the
Congo was given to King Leopold of Belgium, who ran it as a private
preserve for decades. Belgian rule in the Congo was barbaric
even by the brutal standards of European colonialism in Africa.
In their quest for rubber and ivory, the Belgians murdered as
many as 15 million Congolese in the first 30 years of their rule.
When the Congo threw off the colonial
regime in 1960, the Belgians hadn't developed the infrastructure
beyond the bare minimum needed to exploit its natural wealth.
At the time of independence, fewer than 30 Congolese had graduated
from college. Moreover, Belgian-based capital maintained vast
holdings in the country, and the Belgian government--with the
active participation of both the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations
in the U.S.--conspired to mold post-independence Congo to suit
its desires.
Congo's elected prime minister, Patrice
Lumumba, was murdered a few months by Belgian agents just months
after taking office--with the active support of the CIA. Lumumba
was assassinated because he advocated independence from the U.S.
in foreign policy--and opposed the continued domination of the
country by Western political and economic interests.
After Lumumba's death, the CIA installed
the dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, who ruled Congo for 32 years,
killing uncounted thousands and stealing an estimated $5 billion.
Mobutu--who renamed the country Zaire--was always faithful to
his masters in Washington, who rewarded him for being a Cold
War ally against Moscow-backed "communism."
The Cold War in Africa, however, was
never cold. The U.S. and USSR fought proxy wars up and down the
continent.
When Washington backed colonial and white
minority governments, Mobutu gave U.S. policy an African face.
It didn't hurt Mobutu's prospects that the Congo has immense
amounts of gold, cobalt, uranium and other valuable or strategic
minerals that the U.S. coveted.
With the collapse of the USSR in 1991
and the end of the Cold War, the nominally "socialist"
pro-Moscow governments in Africa turned to the free-market "neoliberalism"
pushed by Washington through the International Monetary Fund
and other institutions. Washington had no more reason to support
Mobutu's corrupt regime and cut him loose.
Mobutu's brutal dictatorship was overthrown
in 1997 by a rebel movement led by Laurent Kabila and backed
by Rwanda. Yet the country was soon plunged into what some have
called "Africa's first world war" as armies and militias
from Zimbabwe, Angola, Zambia, Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda and the
Kabila government fought over the vast territory and rich mineral
deposits in Congo.
Laurent Kabila was assassinated in 2001,
but the fighting has continued under the government led by his
son, Joseph. This war is the background for the current bloodletting
in Ituri.
Uganda and Rwanda both claimed strategic
interests in invading the eastern part of the Congo, but their
alliance eventually unraveled. The Ugandan army armed the Hema-based
UPC, while Rwanda armed Lendu militias.
More recently, the Ugandans and Rwandans
switched sides, so that now the UPC is fighting Lendu forces
backed by Uganda. When the Ugandans pulled their troops out of
Ituri earlier this year under a peace deal, the violence skyrocketed.
But when Washington and Paris make pious
pronouncements about ending the bloodshed in the Congo, remember
their role in Africa's other recent civil wars. The U.S. military
made its first direct intervention in Africa in 1992 amid Somalia's
civil war as part of a UN peacekeeping mission. Washington's
stated aim was ending a famine--but U.S. forces killed an estimated
10,000 until resistance forced the U.S. to withdraw in 1993.
During the genocide in Rwanda the following
year, President Bill Clinton didn't lift a finger to stop one
million murders in two months carried out by an ethnically based
Hutu government against the minority Tutsis. In the aftermath
of that bloodletting, a new Tutsi-led government took power in
Rwanda. The new Rwandan government soon invaded eastern Congo--backed
Kabila's rebel army--to establish a buffer between the Hutu refugees
and Rwanda proper.
For its part, France--by far the dominant
European power in the region--had backed the genocidal Hutu government,
and saw its influence decline as a result. Washington seized
the opportunity to increase its presence at France's expense.
The U.S. adopted Uganda's strongman president,
Yoweri Museveni, as its proxy in the region--and former president
Bill Clinton made a high-profile visit to Uganda in 1998 as part
of his six-country tour of Africa. Clinton's Africa Growth and
Opportunity Act, hailed as a new era in US aid for Africa, is
a NAFTA-style agreement that opens the door to greater domination
of the region by U.S. corporations. Meanwhile, the U.S. International
Military Education and Training Program provides training to
African military officers from 44 countries at U.S. facilities--and
Washington has increased spending on the program from $8.8 million
in 2001 to $11.1 million in 2003. Finally, it is no coincidence
that the Congo sits on some of the richest gold and diamond deposits
in the world--and that the country has recently discovered oil
reserves.
So the war for control of the Congo isn't
mindless tribal killing. It's a war of the new world order--one
in which traditional allies in Europe and the U.S. back competing
sides in a slaughter for key economic resources and strategic
influence.
Will UN troops bring
peace?
THE RECENT killings in Bunia--about 700
by some estimates--are unremarkable in a war that has claimed
millions of lives in a few years. What's different are the accounts
of horrific mutilations and cannibalism--and the fact that these
killings took place within a few hundred yards of a UN "peacekeeper"
compound. There were about 700 UN soldiers in Bunia in late May,
who sat in their compound and 'observed' the killings.
For many, this is reminiscent of Rwanda
in 1994, when a UN detachment sat in Kigali throughout the genocide--and
the UN ignored repeated warnings in the preceding months that
genocide was about to break out. Again in the Congo, the UN has
paid no attention to repeated warnings from Ituri that massacres
would happen once the Ugandan army left.
In the face of this inaction, many see
the vote to send 1400 heavily armed soldiers, led by France,
as a step in the right direction. In late May, both Human Rights
Watch and Amnesty International called on the Security Council
to "deploy a rapid reaction force to protect civilians in
Ituri."
But UN peacekeepers have never brought
peace and justice--and the UN's history in Congo is particularly
revolting. UN troops were at the very least complicit in Congo
Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba's murder in 1961--and they actively
aided the pro-U.S. forces that led to Mobutu's vicious dictatorship.
As Lumumba, the only democratically elected
leader the Congo has ever had, said in 1960, "How does a
blue [UN] armband vaccinate against the racism and paternalism
of people whose only vision of Africa is lion hunting, slave
markets and colonial conquest?" And the notion that the
French have benign intentions is absurd, given France's own bloody
history of colonialism in Africa.
If France, the U.S. and Britain really
wanted to do something about Africa's apocalypse, why haven't
they cancelled the foreign debt, sent convoys of AIDS drugs,
and made reparations for their centuries long pillage of the
entire continent?
There's no solution to the Congo war
in continued cynical intervention by the imperialist powers that
created the crisis in the first place. The long-suffering majority
of the Congolese will get peace and justice only when they take
control of their resources, their politics, and their society.
The hope for different
Africa
WHILE ATTENTION is concentrated on the
Congo, crises and wars caused by the same legacy of colonialism
and imperialism wrack many other places in sub-Saharan Africa.
Tens of thousands have died from hunger
in the Horn of Africa in recent months--and more than 20 million
in Southern Africa live on the brink of starvation. Some 25 million
people in the region have AIDS, according to UN agencies. Liberia,
Sierra Leone and the Sudan all are suffering horrific civil wars
bred by poverty and crisis.
In Western capitals, UN peacekeeping
is the only solution that is offered. Yet in West Africa, the
"peacekeeping" is being carried out by the notorious
Nigerian military, which has spent decades crushing popular revolt
at home.
Oil-rich Nigeria, the most populous country
in Africa, recently held an election hailed in the West as an
example of democracy. In reality, both main candidates were former
military dictators of the country--and the election was rife
with fraud and coercion. The big winners in Nigeria remain the
oil companies and their patrons in Washington.
In Zimbabwe, a recent general strike
has highlighted the resistance to the corrupt and repressive
government of Robert Mugabe. While there has been increased pressure
on Mugabe from the West recently, Washington and London backed
him to the hilt when he pushed through the IMF programs that
created the country's economic disaster.
Over the whole region, there has been
a big retreat from the promise of a "new dawn" with
the fall of apartheid in South Africa. The African National Congress
(ANC) government came to power at the head of a massive popular
movement spearheaded by the powerful South African trade unions.
Yet the ANC has consistently pursued the failed pro-business
policies of neoliberalism at the expense of ordinary South Africans.
Nevertheless, resistance is taking shape.
In South Africa, the unions and social movements that broke the
back of apartheid are increasingly challenging the ANC's neoliberalism.
The opposition movement in Zimbabwe is
based on an organized and active workers' movement. And in Nigeria,
residents of the Delta region have waged a heroic struggle against
Western oil companies and their backers in the government.
It is these struggles--not U.S. or UN
intervention--that point the way forward to real self-determination
for Africa and an end to the crisis.
Chris Fagen
writes for the Socialist
Worker.
Today's Features
Dr.
Susan Block
Sex, Lies and WMDs
Elaine
Cassel
Scalia, the Rumsfeld of the Supremes
Roger Burbach
Brazil Under Lula
Dan
Bacher
The WTO's War on Salmon
Peter
Phillips and Jason Spencer
Entertainment Media 2003
Nuclear
Age Peace Foundation
The Challenge of Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century
Wayne Madsen
Outting Ashcroft's Latest Hypocrisy
Larry
Kearney
Starlight
Steve
Perry
The Bush Administration
Lies Marathon, Day 3
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
Weekend Edition Features
Edward
Said
A Roadmap to What and Where?
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Pryor Unrestraint: Killer Bill Pryor's
Mad Quest for the Federal Bench
David Lindorff
Rumsfeld v. Belgium
Jennifer
Loewenstein
Suicide's Most Willing Accomplice
Lee Sustar
US Tax System: Rigged for the Rich
Ben
Tripp
Of Dissidents and Dissonance
William
S. Lind
Lies, Damned Lies and Military Intelligence
Joanne
Mariner
Rebellious Judges
Gila Svirsky
A Macabre Alliance
Mickey
Z.
Where We Are
Chris Floyd
Metaphysics as a Guide to Murder
Noah
Leavitt
Peru as Our Crystal Ball?
Yves Engler
and Bianca Mugyenyi
The G8 and Africa
Dr.
Gerry Lower
Dear Rudy, Let's Get Those Damned Liberals
Ted Dace
A Review of Kovel's The Enemy of Nature
Adam
Engel
Midnight at the Apocalyptic Pancake
Poets'
Basement
Smith, Greeder, Albert, and O'Hayer
Website
of the Weekend
AEI: Starts Wars; Creates
Poverty
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|