Obama could end Congo’s human catastrophe
by Ann Garrison
President Obama would need political consensus to back up a decision that the human catastrophe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo must end. He would need consensus to go against years of U.S. military and geostrategic alliance with Ugandan and Rwandan strongmen Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame and insist, instead, that the U.S. must stop collaborating with the military dictators and international criminal networks preying on the Congolese people, stealing their vast resources and leaving millions of war dead in their wake.
President Obama made no mention of his 2006 Congo legislation during his 2008 presidential run. Very few know that one of his own top trade advisors, Nigerian American billionaire Kase Lawal, was, in a 2011 U.N. investigative report, implicated in a gold smuggling deal with Bosco Ntaganda in Congo. Or that Kase Lawal’s name has since been removed from the list of members of the president’s Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations.
As president of the United States and commander-in-chief, Obama could begin to build consensus for peace and justice in Congo, the heart of Africa, simply by speaking the truth in his own legislation. It’s unlikely that he will because it would shock and alarm his handlers and funders, like so many things that Obama’s former or current supporters have imagined he could do. But the text of the legislation stands on its own, with Sen. Obama’s name on it. It includes essential elements of the truth in 11 years of U.N. investigations referred to in this KPFA Evening News report. – Ann Garrison
KPFA Evening News, broadcast June 2, 2012
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Transcript
KPFA Evening News Anchor Cameron Jones: Tens or some say hundreds of thousands of villagers continue to flee escalating military conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, as reported this week by the Associated Press, BBC, Aljazeera and other international outlets. The U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees says this has caused a humanitarian crisis in overcrowded refugee camps within Congo and in camps on the other side of its eastern borders.
Who is responsible? Some, including Human Rights Watch and the International Criminal Court, have laid blame most of all on East African military commander Bosco Ntaganda. Others say that Ntaganda is just the latest fall guy for an international criminal network. KPFA’s Ann Garrison has the story.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Who is responsible for the new phase of Congo’s armed violence and ongoing human catastrophe? Is it Bosco Ntaganda, the East African military commander indicted by the International Criminal Court and accused by Human Rights Watch and the international press reproducing Human Rights Watch releases?
Serious Africa scholars, human rights investigators and journalists say that Ntaganda is no doubt a war criminal but, at the same time, no more than a midlevel warlord, a fall guy and an international bogeyman, much like Joseph Kony, the personification of evil compared to Osama bin Laden and Adolf Hitler in the viral video “KONY 2012.”
This week, Human Rights Watch said that Rwanda was supporting the armed uprising in Congo with recruits, arms and supplies. And dissident Congolese members of Parliament walked out when the chamber prepared to go into closed session to discuss Congo’s relationship with Rwanda.
At a May 22 U.N. press briefing, Roger Meece, head of the U.N. Peacekeeping Mission in Congo, dodged a question from Inner City Press, a New York City-based investigative outlet, as to Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s history and relationship with Bosco Ntaganda and the CNDP militia.
Roger Meece: Ah, regarding Bosco Ntaganda, I certainly have not seen or I’m not aware of any specific statements that President Kagame has made that Bosco should not be arrested. In terms of past connections, I think you’re fully aware of, of the history of the war, of the settlement, of the agreements reached. I don’t think we have time here to go into an extensive discussion of all of that.
Paul Kato Ndiho: The U.N. had an embargo on Congo, for all these years, there’s been an embargo. But does it surprise you that these guys continue to get arms?
KPFA: KPFA asked Ndiho whether regional and international enforcement actors are aware of the past 11 years of U.N. reports documenting the existence of an international criminal network, including the governments of Uganda and Rwanda, multinational mining, oil and gas, and timber corporations, multinational banks, the World Bank, and bilateral Western donor nations, including the U.S., organized to militarize, destabilize, and plunder the Congo. Ndiho said that this is well known, that the reports have been read, but that there is no international law enforcement apparatus willing to act to stop it.
KPFA: For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison.
San Francisco writer Ann Garrison writes for the San Francisco Bay View, Global Research, Colored Opinions, Black Star News, the Newsline EA (East Africa) and her own website, Ann Garrison, and produces for AfrobeatRadio on WBAI-NYC, Weekend News on KPFA and her own YouTube Channel, AnnieGetYourGang. She can be reached at ann@afrobeatradio.com. This story first appeared on her website.
In this March 2, 2011, congressional briefing about the Oct. 1, 2010, U.N. report documenting atrocities committed by Congo’s neighbors in Congo, Bernadette Mafuta Nkoy, a senator from a minority opposition party in the Democratic Republic of Congo, told the audience that everybody knows who was responsible for killing 200,000 Hutu people in Tingi Tingi and Mbandaka, inside Congo’s borders, and that when they come to the West, they have V.I.P. privilege,” she says. “They always talk about the genocide in Rwanda, with 1 million people,” she said, “but in DRC, with 6 million people, people try to minimize the impact. The war became an economic war.”
She went on to say that her own Congolese government has been protecting the ICC indicted warlord Bosco Ntaganda.
why no Body talking about the Genocide of Hutu refugees since 1996, millions of people were killed by Rwandan( RPF army).
There was amovie made about wiht Don sheale -Hotel RWANDA it got extensive coverage .
Are you kidding, Renaldo? Hotel Rwanda was about the genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. It was a very onesided, fairy tale version of what happened in 1994, without the context of the four year Rwandan Civil War.
Ann tellme the other side-i must have missed it – enlighten me.
We've been talking about it for three years here in the Bay View, so you could try searching for "Rwanda" and "Congo." But, are you on Facebook? I grabbed an image from Professor Allan Stam's lecture and posted it to my FB page a year or so ago. This is the best sound bite sized summary of the alternative narrative that I know of: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=101502036…
I don't agree with all of Allan Stam's conclusions but here's the video of his lecture: http://lockerz.com/d/6717490
Yes amon FB – I was referring to the million or so people killed in the tribal affair.I heard the Dutch propgated the case scenario but these tribal wars hav eben going on for centuries.
Renaldo, I'd like to ask you to search the Bay View for Rwanda, because since January 2009, we've been covering that, the Rwanda "tribal affair," which we know to include far more international actors than much of the world realizes. This interview with Victoire Ingabire is on the long side, http://sfbayview.com/2010/rwandas-victoire-ingabi… but you can also find much shorter reports on Rwanda, the genocide, and its aftermath, here on the Bay View.
Plus I posted Stam's account, which I said I don't totally agree with, but that's another dissident account of "the tribal affair."
The reason Obama has done nothing about ther situation in the congo is academic. Amerikant businesmen have substantial economic in terest in minerals in the Congo. The people are tied ito maor contributers of the campaign. Obama is not the solve all candidate for the continent of Africa no one man has that power. The business of Amerika is big business as (Roosevelt )-points out . One man alone canot stop th genocide but people united behind a cause weilds much more poweer than any one man. As yu should know the strenght comes in unity. Hoping Obama wave a magic wand and cure all is simplistic and absurd. Many voted for Obambased on this unreal concept of goverment. Unless he was dictator of the planet and could controlall economic interest. .
Africa is still being exploited by colonialist hey stilll have a mercantile relation ship with their former oppressors,they left Black overseers on the plantation and this is why progress doesnt take root in most Africna societies.Europe still dominates the continent by proxi.
Renaldo, did you hear me saying that Obama should "wave a magic wand"? I thought I'd made it clear that "Obama" in that headline means the institutional force invested in Obama, but, at the same time, Obama the president and former senator who is, after all, conscious and very knowledgeable about Congo.
Some may be conscious as well as knowledgeable about this situation but, their interest comes into question. I tend to lean more toward the thinking of brother Renaldo based on my personal research.____
Many view the presidency as a supreme commander,it's not. this is a very complex counrtry ,the president can't end teh econopmic interest in the Congo by US companies.If he does he may becaome a target of assasination. The Americant in dustrialist rule this country.During WWII they were selling oil to Hitler as he bombed Europe, teh president couldn't stopthem form making a profit . The Duponts hatched a plan to kill FDR, these people rule the world with impunity. Unfortunately Africa is still a colony with window dressing Black head of state.
Constitutionally, the President has absolute executive authority over the US Armed Forces and anyone who disobeys his command is subject to court martial. That doesn't mean he isn't always considering all pressures from all sides and asking himself what he really wants to do and what is possible.
He passed up a lot of his greatest possibilities when he walked into office with the greatest mandate any of us are likely to have seen in our lifetimes. The first thing he did was mercilessly drone bomb Pakistan. Actually that was after supporting another Rwandan invasion of Congo on his election day. These things and more militarization and war, plus the bailout, cost him the overwhelming mandate, which was not just national but global. Had he acted differently, he might have lost the support of AIPAC, clean coal, nuclear power, Goldman Sachs.
Do we see the patterns of genocide? It's self evident their intensions were never noble,the objective was to conquer,pillage, rule and enslave. As an astute student of history my blood boils to temperatures that'll melt steel and twist the axis of the this planet. How could they be so bold and continue to perpectuate this sick social disease today.They've not evolved the barbarism still permeates the souls of the lost maniac.
@ Nelly,
Nobody is alking about the hutu genocide in Congo because it never happened. Genocide means targeting and killing people because of who they are. As far as facts are concerned, the RDF did dismantle the refugee camps not because they occupants were Hutus but because the defeated ex-Far murderes were hiding in those camps getting ready to come back to Rwanda and finish their heinous and barbaric acts they had started 2 years prior. Besides, in rhe process of dismantling those camps, the RDF managed to repatriate close to 2 million refugees back Rwanda which begs the following question: how in this world could the RDF plan to exterminate Hutu refugees because of who they were and yet repatriate them back in Rwanda? If exterminating Hutus was the the RDF’s motivation to enter Kivu, then the Rwandan soldiers wouldn’t have bothered to bring them back, they would instead have killed them all in the jungles of the Congo. I know you people and the likes of Ann Garrison hide behind forum like this to spread faslsehoods and innuendoes, but facts are facts no matter what. ALUTA CONTINUA!!
Ann Garrison,
Truth will always prevail no matter how long it takes. It may take a generation or 50 or 100 yrs but the truth will always come out victorious. Baby, you are on the opposing side of facts and you’re sadly mistaken if you think that your lies will prevail over facts in the long run. It amuses me to see you trying to portray yourself as a social justice seeker/promoter/activist, but you’re nothing more than a propagandist like those from “FIX NEWS”‘s Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly not to mention such haters as Glen Beck and Rush Limbaugh. ALUTA CONTINUA!!
There should be circulating on the Web a list or lists of the names, addresses, and other identifying and incriminating information on the major individual and corporate capitalists, including their bankers and political enablers, involved in ripping off the Congo's resources. It is important, however, that such information be susceptible to validation and verification by those who might choose to act on it.
I'm reporting on Glencore International in Congo next week for KPFA.
Ann, are you censoring me? My 2 comments had no profanity, i was just stating a dissenting view from your usual vitriol. See, you hide behind forums like these to lay blame on others for the things you're guilty of. According to you, the Kagame administration engages in censorship of the media.
Well, if that's true, how about what you just did to my comments a couple of days ago? CENSORING.
I guess you and Kagame have something in common!!
I don't have any power to censor anyone on the SF Bay View and I'm sure the editors are not either. If they didn't censor the hideous comments below, I'm sure they're not censoring you.
WHITE FUCKING POWER. NIGGERS SHOULD BE PICKING MY COTTON ON MY FARM. HANG ALL OF THOSE FUCKING BABOONS FROM TREES!
Fuck those niggers they have done nothing to further the advancenment of human society. Seriously name one thing africa has contributed to the world besides slaves. Just admit it by reading your atricles I can tell Niggers are only fit for doing the rest of societys unskilled labor. In todays society a nigger can get a job just about any due to Affirmative Action due to quotas that companys have to hire an certain number on niggers to comply with the law and you still have twice the unemployment of white americans. Im drumk but look at history everything you try at you fail at including this newspaper. GO Back To Africa and stop bitching.
This is about Africa, you unspeakable idiot. It's about ending the war and plunder in Africa.