Mamdani called Save Darfur “the most successful piece of single issue organizing since the Vietnam era antiwar movement, really more successful than the antiwar movement.” But Save Darfur, with slogans like “boots on the ground,” “out of Iraq, into Darfur” and persistent demands for the creation of “no fly zones” is far from being an antiwar movement.

As Black Agenda Report (BAR) pointed in a 2007 article, “Ten Reasons Why ‘Save Darfur’ is a PR Scam to Justify the Next US Oil and Resource Wars in Africa,” Save Darfur is no grassroots movement either.

The backers and founders of the ‘Save Darfur’ movement are the well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite. According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer,

The “Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country — the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum . . .

The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year . . .

‘Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars.’

Though the “Save Darfur” PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manufacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.

None of the funds raised by the “Save Darfur Coalition”, the flagship of the “Save Darfur Movement” go to help needy Africans on the ground in Darfur, according to 2008 stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The Appeal of Save Darfur to US Audiences

Mamdani explained the unique appeal of the Save Darfur Movement to US audiences by noting that unlike US responsibility for the one million Iraqi dead over the last six years, the Save Darfur Movement does not demand that we understand Darfur’s history, ethnography, or the complexities of the current conflict there, or acknowledge any culpability of our own. Unlike the killings in Iraq, Save Darfur does not demand that Americans respond as citizens, with a need to account for responsibilities and actions, but merely as human beings with a need to feel powerful and justified. Save Darfur, Mamdani argued, has de-historicized and de-politicized the conflict for its American audience, presenting them with a simple morality play in which they can be the heroes.

Everybody wants to be a hero. Nobody wants to be a citizen.

And what could be more heroically self-justifying and self-affirming than intervening on the side of the angels in the picture of straight-up racial conflict presented to us by the Save Darfur Movement? The trouble is, it’s an utterly false picture. The historic and present uses and definitions of race in America are not nearly the same as those in Africa. Most of Darfur’s janjaweed who committed atrocities against civilians in Darfur are as black as those they murdered, and just as indigenous. The prosecutors at the International Criminal Court who recently indicted the Sudanese president are accountable only to the wealthy nations of the UN Security Council, not to anybody on the African continent. And the casualty figures thrown out by Save Darfur are wildly inflated.

Darfuri Casualties Inflated by Save Darfur and US Authorities

Professor Mamdani noted that in response to a request from members of Congress, GAO, the independent US government agency whose job it is to monitor the accuracy of information disseminated by other organs of government assessed the widely varying casualty figures coming out of Darfur in 2006. 2004-2006 was the time when the atrocities in Darfur were at their height. They took the low-end figures of 50 to 70 thousand dead, which came from the World Health Organization, and the much higher ones of 200 to 400 thousand coming from people affiliated with Save Darfur, and submitted them to the National Academy of Sciences. The scientists told GAO that the lower figures were more accurate, and those were used in its 2006 assessment of the Darfur situation.

The State Department however, produced reports with two different sets of casualty figures, low numbers for the use of its policymakers, and the higher ones produced by Save Darfur and its allies for public consumption.

To this day, Mamdani contended, the US public is being fed grossly inflated on Darfuri casualties. He recounted a briefing he attended where the commander of the African Union’s forces reported 1,500 deaths in Darfur in all of 2008, as many as Save Darfur and the US government claim are dying every month.

Comparing Darfur and the Congo, Fake vs Real Genocides

Nobody disputes that there is a bipartisan military industrial complex in the US, which creates the “facts” it requires to justify interventions around the world. The Save Darfur coalition, comprising as it does figures who trace their activism to the Freedom Movement like Congressman John Lewis, along with the compatriots of the late Jerry Falwell, would not hold on any other issue under the sun. It is a creation of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, which urgently needs “humanitarian” cover for its imperial ambitions to control Africa’s oil and other resources.

The blatant hypocrisy of the Save Darfur Movement is most evident when one compares the manufactured concern over 50 to 70 thousand dead in Darfur to the ink and air devoted to five million dead in neighboring Congo. But using professor Mamdani’s yardstick, it’s not hard to understand. Intervening in Darfur makes us heroes. But in the Congo, proxies of the US and the West have been instigated the invasion and depopulation and plundering of the whole of Eastern Congo. There is a lake of oil beneath Sudan, much of it in Darfur. But the Chinese are pumping that oil, not Chevron or BP or Exxon.

To return to our own 2007 article on the Save Darfur movement”

The selective and cynical application of the term “genocide” to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy around the “Save Darfur” movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters, mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other Congolese resources continue undisturbed.

Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the board of Barrcik Gold, one of the largest and most active mining concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no Congolese “genocide” worth noting, much less interfering with. For their purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the bother of official U.S. boots on the ground.

Responding to the very real genocide in the Congo would require ordinary Americans to think like citizens rather then heroic self-affirmers. But that’s a hard sell.

We can only hope that the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of Congress who last month lent their credibility to the Save Darfur people can get over their self affirming “heroism” and begin to meet Dr. Mamdani’s challenge: to act like citizens and the leaders of citizens, to do the homework, to help others do the homework and to face up to our responsibilities for real genocide in the Congo, and prolonging the war in Sudan. It’s not too late.

After some weeks of back and forth discussions and me revisiting notes and photos to see what I had, I sent them an e-mail at the definitive moment when they were hoping to receive a brief “dossier” about the specific case — which they said “had generated a lot of interest” at the ICC — and I shared my uncertainty about the ethics of collaborating with an “International Criminal Court” that was only indicting black Africans. I indicated my concern for the witness ‘Sandrine,’ a young girl discussed in my story who named names of commanders, dates of executions, and who herself used a machete in an ethnic massacre and was raped by militiamen. I noted that witnesses identified for the Rwandan Tribunal (ICTR) had been murdered or mysteriously disappeared, and noted my awareness of the injustice of the Tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and the disconcerting trajectory of the ICC.

I told them I couldn’t in good conscience help them, it seemed, until the ICC arrested some of the white-collar war criminals running loose around the world. It was the right decision, in light of the recent ICC indictments against another black man, and an Arab at that. It was a very stupid career move, some one else remarked.

On 4 March 2009 the ICC prosecutors announced that they were at last issuing the long-threatened but first ever indictments against a sitting head of state, Omar al-Bashir, the Arab President of Sudan. Meanwhile, Somali ‘pirates’ off East Africa recently freed a Ukrainian ship with a Panamanian registration, a Ukrainian crew and flag of Belize. The freighter carried tanks, rockets and munitions destined for Darfur, and is owned by an Israeli ‘businessman’ and reputed MOSSAD operative named Vadim Alperin.

It is difficult to make sense of the war in Darfur — especially when people see it as a one-sided “genocide” of Arabs against blacks that is being committed by the Bashir ‘regime’ — but such is the establishment propaganda. The real story is much more expansive, more complex, and it revolves around some relatively unknown but shady characters. What follows is a short and imperfect summary of some of the deeper geopolitical realities behind the struggle for Sudan.

THE POLITICS OF WAR CRIMES

First note that the ICC can now be viewed as a tool of hegemonic U.S. foreign policy, where the weapons deployed by the U.S. and its allies include the accusations of, and indictments for, human rights violations, war crimes and crimes against humanity. To understand this, we can ask why no white man has yet been charged with these or other offenses at the ICC, which now holds five black African “warlords” and seeks to incarcerate and bring to trial another black man, also an Arab, Omar Bashir. Why hasn’t George W. Bush been indicted? Or what about Donald Rumsfeld? Dick Cheney? Henry Kissinger? Ehud Olmert? Tony Blair? Vadim Alperin? John Bredenkamp?

Following on the heels of the announcement that the ICC handed down seven war crimes charges against al-Bashir, a story broadcast over all the Western media system and into every American living room by day’s end, President al-Bashir ordered the expulsion of ten international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) operating in Darfur under the pretense of being purely ‘humanitarian’ organizations.

What has not been reported anywhere in the English press is that the United States of America has just stepped up its ongoing war for control of Sudan and her resources: petroleum, copper, gold, uranium, fertile plantation lands for sugar and gum Arabic (essential to Coke, Pepsi and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream). This war has been playing out on the ground in Darfur through so-called ‘humanitarian’ NGOs, private military companies, ‘peacekeeping’ operations and covert military operations backed by the U.S. and its closest allies.

However, the U.S. war for Sudan has always revolved around ‘humanitarian’ operations — purportedly neutral and presumably concerned only about protecting innocent human lives — that often provide cover for clandestine destabilizing activities and interventions.

Americans need to recognize that the Administration of President Barack Obama has begun to step up the war for control of Sudan in keeping with the permanent warfare agenda of both Republicans and Democrats. The current destabilization of Sudan mirrors the illegal covert guerrilla war carried out in Rwanda — also launched and supplied from Uganda — from October 1990 to July 1994. The Rwandan Defense Forces (then called the Rwandan Patriotic Army) led by Major General Paul Kagame achieved the U.S. objective of a coup d’etat in Rwanda through that campaign, and President Kagame has been a key interlocutor in the covert warfare underway in Darfur, Sudan.

During the Presidency of George W. Bush, the U.S. Government was involved with the intelligence apparatus of the Government of Sudan (GoS). At the same time, other U.S. political and corporate factions were pressing for a declaration of genocide against the GoS. Now, given the shift of power and the appointment of top Clinton officials formerly involved in covert operations in Rwanda, Uganda, Congo and Sudan during the Clinton years, pressure has been applied to heighten the campaign to destabilize the GoS, portrayed as a ‘terrorist’ Arab regime, but an entity operating outside the U.S.-controlled banking system. The former campaign saw overt military action with the U.S. military missile attacks against the Al-Shifa Pharmaceutical factory in Sudan (1998); this was an international war crime by the Clinton Administration and it involved officials now in power.

The complex geopolitical struggle to control Sudan manifests through the flashpoint war for Darfur and it involves such diverse factions as the Lord’s Resistance Army, backed by Khartoum, which is also connected to the wars in the Congo and northern Uganda. Chad is involved, Eritrea and Ethiopia, Germany, the Central African Republic, Libya, France, Israel, China, Taiwan, South Africa and Rwanda. There are U.S. special forces on the ground in the frontline states of Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, Kenya, and the big questions are: [1] How many of the killings are being committed by U.S. proxy forces and blamed on al-Bashir and the GoS? And [2] who funds, arms and trains the rebel insurgents

UNITED STATES AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVASTATION

Rebels? Insurgents? The drumbeat of western propaganda portrays the conflict as a one-sided affair: a “genocidal counter-insurgency by the GoS” — in the words of Eric Reeves — versus the good Samaritans of the ‘humanitarian’ NGO community . . . and throw in a few (non-descript) rebels.

“Sudan ordered at least 10 humanitarian groups expelled from Darfur on Wednesday after the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for the country’s president,” wrote Associated Press reporter Ellen M. Lederer. “Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the action ‘represents a serious setback to lifesaving operations in Darfur’ and urged Sudan to reverse its decision, U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.”

However, when Ban Ki-moon met with Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame recently, he never called for Kagame’s arrest, no matter the findings of two international courts of law that have issued indictments against top RPA officials. Instead Ban Ki-moon praised Kagame and called for African countries to hunt down and arrest Hutu people purportedly involved in the now specious ‘genocide’ in Rwanda in 1994.

The non-governmental aid groups ordered out of Darfur by President al-Bashir on March 4 were Oxfam, CARE, MSF-Holland, Mercy Corps, Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the International Rescue Committee, Action Contre la Faim, Solidarites and CHF International.

Of course, the western media is all over the expulsion of any big ‘humanitarian’ moneymaker from Darfur — the moral outrage is so thick you can almost wipe it. The NGOs and the press that peddles their images of suffering babes complain that hundreds of thousands of innocent refugees will now be subjected to massive unassisted suffering — as opposed to the assisted suffering they previously faced — but never asks with any serious and honest zeal, why and how the displaced persons and refugees came to be displaced or homeless to begin with. Neither do they ask about all the money, intelligence sharing, deal making, and collaboration with private or governmental military agencies.

Large ‘humanitarian’ NGOs (and ‘conservation’ NGOs) operate as de facto multinational corporations revolving around massive private profits and human suffering. In places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Darfur these NGOs also provide infrastructure, logistical and intelligence collaboration that supports U.S. military and government agendas in the region. Most are aligned with big foundations, corporate sponsors and USAID — itself a close and long-time partner for interventions with AFRICOM and the Pentagon.

Refugees and displaced populations are strategic tools of statecraft and foreign policy, just as ‘humanitarian’ NGOs consistently use food as a weapon and populations as human shields. The history of the U.S. covert war in South Sudan is rich with examples of the SPLA and its ‘humanitarian’ partners, especially Christian ‘charities’, committing such war crimes and crimes against humanity.¹

CARE International has received funding from Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s largest and most secretive producer of weapons of mass destruction, and both CARE and Save the Children are tied up with weapons and extractive industries in other ways. A peek at the board of directors of Save the Children makes it clear why the U.S. media is so devoid of truth about Darfur. Similarly, the International Rescue Committee does not work with refugees, per se, but serves as a policy and pressure group involved in funneling private profits from the west back to the west. The IRC has also been cited for involvement in military operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo and it has deep ties to people like Henry Kissinger.

The AID (read: misery) industry in Sudan was by the mid-1990s the largest so-called ‘humanitarian’ enterprise on the planet, Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) — a form of managed inequality and a temporary and mobile economy of white privilege, adventurism and, of course, good will (sic). The misery industry shifted its focus from South Sudan to Darfur after a pseudo peace ‘treaty’ was organized to end the decades old war between the SPLA and GoS; the U.S. and Israel backed the SPLA from 1990 onward, and continue to do so at present. The result of more than 12 years of illegal U.S. covert low-intensity warfare in Sudan resulted in the creation of the independent and sovereign state of South Sudan in circa 2005 — a state dominated by Jewish and Christian faith-based interests and western multinational corporations.

Much of the AID infrastructure in Sudan has at one time or another been used as a weapon through the use of human shields, food deliveries to refugee populations inseparable from insurgents, and shipments of weapons by ‘humanitarian’ NGOs. This is both incidental and deliberate policy. Christian ‘relief’ NGOs played a huge role in supporting the covert western insurgency in South Sudan. One notable ‘humanitarian’ NGO involved in weapons deliveries was the Norwegian People’s Aid (known affectionately in the field as the Norwegian People’s Army).

In Darfur, Sudan, the U.S. government agenda is to win control of natural resources and leverage the Arab government into a corner and, at last, establish a more ‘friendly’ government that will suit the corporate interests of the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia and Israel.

Several major think tanks — read: propaganda, lobbying and pressure — behind the destabilization of Sudan include the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, Center for American Progress, Center for Security Policy, International Rescue Committee and International Crises Group. Individuals from seemingly diverse positions of the political and ideological spectrum run these organizations, which are ultra-nationalist capitalist organizations bent on global military-economic domination.

The former Clinton officials most heavily focused on the destabilization of Sudan include: Susan Rice, Madeleine Albright, Roger Winter, Prudence Bushnell, Hillary Clinton, John Podesta, Anthony Lake and John Prendergast. Carr Center for Human Rights co-founder Samantha Power, now on the Obama National Security Council, has helped to whitewash clandestine U.S. involvement in Sudan.

John Prendergast has continued to peddle disinformation disguised as policy and human rights concerns through the International Crisis Group (ICG), and through its many clone organizations like ENOUGH, ONE and RAISE HOPE FOR CONGO. Prendergast has been a pivotal agent behind the hi-jacking of U.S. public concern and action through the disingenuous (and discredited) SAVE DARFUR movement.

Other notable agents of disinformation on Sudan include Alex de Waal and Smith College Professor Eric Reeves. It is through these and other conduits to the corporate U.S. media that the story of ‘genocide’ in Sudan is cast as an Africa-Arab affair devoid of western interests.

In 1992, human rights researchers Rakiya Omaar and Alex de Waal established the London-based NGO African Rights. In August 1995, African Rights published Rwanda: Death, Despair and Defiance, one of many pivotal ‘human rights’ reports that falsely represented events in Rwanda, set the stage for victor’s justice at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda, and began the process of dehumanizing millions of Hutu people and protecting the true terrorists: Yoweri Museveni, Paul Kagame, the Rwandan Patriotic Army, and their western backers.

THE MAN FOR A NEW SUDAN

The pivotal intelligence asset working on the ground in Sudan to destabilize and overthrow the Government of Sudan (GoS) is Roger Winter, profiled very disingenuously in the seven-page New York Times Magazine feature story of 15 June 2008.

Interestingly, “The Man For A New Sudan” story, an establishment whitewash of the involvement of the U.S. military-intelligence establishment in Sudan, was written by Eliza Griswold, a ‘Fellow’ with the New America Foundation, a left-leaning think tank and pressure group with a very confused ideological but nationalist-militaristic position. (The NAF is obviously dependent on U.S. foundation funding, and it reveals no apparent policy formulations of substance on the Great Lakes or Horn of Africa, conflicts for which they remain completely silent).

“When Roger Winter’s single-engine Cessna Caravan touched down near the Sudanese town of Abyei on Easter morning, a crowd of desperate men swamped the plane,” Griswold wrote. “Some came running over the rough red airstrip. Others crammed into a microbus that barreled toward the 65-year-old Winter as he climbed down the plane’s silver ladder. Some Sudanese call Winter ‘uncle’; others call him ‘commander’.”

Winter’s special post at the State Department was created specifically for him and his ‘work’ in Sudan. Why do Sudanese people in South Sudan call Roger Winter ‘commander’?

Roger Winter is the primary conduit for the ongoing covert destabilization of Sudan. His operations are run primarily out of Uganda, with the terrorist government of Yoweri Museveni providing support through the Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) alliance with the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

The SPLA is the de facto backbone of the Sudan Liberation Army, one of the main so-called ‘rebel’ factions involved in Darfur; the SPLA provides military and logistics support to Uganda from the Pentagon through unknown channels, but most likely involving the nearby Pentagon client states of Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Chad and Eritrea.

The primary Ugandan agents supporting the U.S. war in Darfur have always been, and remain, Brigadier General James Kazini, a nephew of Ugandan dictator Museveni and the chief of staff of the Ugandan People’s Defense Forces (UPDF); General Salim Saleh, half-brother of Museveni; and President Yoweri Museveni himself.

One of the main protagonists in the Darfur conflict is the current military regime in Rwanda, whose troops have been involved in Darfur under the guise of an ‘independent’ and ‘peacekeeping’ operation under the African Union ‘peacekeeping’ umbrella — back by NATO and private military companies.

Little known and widely misunderstood is the role of the United States and its proxies, the UPDF and the RPA, in committing massive crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide during the Rwandan conflagration from 1990 to 1994. Prior to the RPA invasion of Rwanda (from Uganda) in October 1990, the RPA and Rwandan Tutsi Diaspora had publications like Impuruza published in the United States between 1984 and 1994 (when the RPA achieved the coup d’etat against Rwandan President Habyarimana). Tutsi refugees joined Roger Winter, who was at the time the Director of the United States Committee for Refugees, to help fund the publication. The editor, Alexander Kimenyi, is a Rwandan national and a professor at California State University. Like most RPA publications Impuruza circulated clandestinely in Rwanda amongst Hutu and Tutsi elite and it peddled a genocidal ideology against Hutu people.

The Association of Banyarwanda in Diaspora USA, assisted by Roger Winter, organized the International Conference on the Status of Banyarwanda [Tutsi] Refugees in Washington, DC in 1988, and this is where a military solution to the Tutsi problem was chosen. The U.S. Committee for Refugees reportedly provided accommodation and transportation.

THE DEVIL CAME IN A HELIOCOPTER

Roger Winter was one of the primary architects of the RPA guerrilla war, organized from Washington in 1989, that has led to the loss of more than ten or twelve million lives in the Great Lakes of Africa since 1990. Winter acted as a spokesman for the RPF and their allies, and he appeared as a guest on major U.S. television networks such as PBS and CNN. New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch and Roger Winter made contacts on behalf of the RPA with American media, particularly the Washington Post, New York Times and Time magazine.

Roger Winter moved through Rwanda during the RPA invasion and worked the front lines of the covert war as a key Pentagon and U.S. State Department asset in collaboration with the Kagame-RPA operation of terror. From 1990 to 1994, Winter traveled back and forth from the RPA-controlled zone to Washington D.C., where he briefed and coordinated activities and support with U.S. military, intelligence and government officials.

Roger Winter is intimate with USAID, and is a long-time ally of Susan Rice, former Assistant Secretary of State on African Affairs (1997-2001), Special Assistant to President Clinton (1995-1997), and National Security Council insider (1993-1997). Susan Rice is the Obama Administration’s Ambassador to the United Nations and staunch enemy of Omar al-Bashir.

Roger Winter is also a staunch supporter of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, one of the leading U.S. Democrats pressing for action to “stop genocide” in Darfur, Sudan. Payne sponsored the Darfur Genocide Accountability Act and was arrested in June 2001, along with John Eibner, director of Christian Solidarity International, for protesting against the GoS.

Christian Solidarity International has a very subversive relationship to ‘peace’ and ‘religion’ in Sudan, and they have been one of the front-runner organizations peddling the accusations of slavery by the al-Bashir government, in particular, a highly contested and controversial issue generally inflated and manipulated by fundamentalist Jewish and Christian NGOs and missionary organizations, like Christian Solidarity International, Samaritan’s Purse, Servant’s Heart, and Freedom Quest International, that operate in Sudan.

“Roger Winter was the chief logistic boss for [RPA] Tutsis as early as mid-1990,” says Ugandan human rights expert Remigius Kintu, “and until their victory in 1994 they were operating from 1,717 Massachusetts Avenue NW in Washington, D.C. Roger Winter told a [name deleted] South Sudanese exile at the time [1994]: ‘I have now stabilized Rwanda and will turn my full attention to Sudan.’ Winter subsequently closed up shop in Rwanda and based himself in Kampala working on Sudan. A few years later, Darfur exploded and with Winter’s manipulations, Rwanda was the first to send troops into that troubled area. From my sources, the Rwanda Defense Forces [working under the African Union umbrella] have killed civilians and brought in their media experts to pile the blame on Sudanese government troops.”

This is exactly what the Kagame and Museveni terror apparatus has done in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Much of the terror operations of the UPDF/RPF in Rwanda in the 1990s were covered up by Human Rights Watch experts Alison Des Forges (d. February 2009) and Timothy Longman, Associate Prof. of Africana Studies and Political Science at Vassar College.

Similarly, throughout the long war in south Sudan, and now in Darfur, the atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed factions were/are downplayed, dismissed or ignored, while those committed by competing factions are amplified and spotlighted. Also, following the pattern of UPDF and RPA criminal activities — such as massacres committed under disguise and/or attributed to the ‘enemy’ — for which there is now a long history of documentation, and given the lack of any true independent evaluation, there is no telling who actually committed the massacres always blamed on the GoS or ‘Janjaweed’ militias.

One Sudanese professional from the south told me recently that it was not the Government of Sudan but rather the UPDF and SPLA who were arming the Janjaweed — the so-called Arab militias accused of wanton killing in an Arab-against-Black genocide. (This Arab-on-black genocide has been widely discredited.

Professor Timothy Longman and Alison Des Forges co-produced the fat treatise on ‘genocide’ in Rwanda, Leave None to Tell the Story, published in 1999. Longman and Des Forges produced numerous documents, based on field investigations in Congo (Zaire), Rwanda and Burundi, from 1995 to 2008, touted as independent and unbiased human rights reports but always skewed by hidden interests. Both Longman and Des Forges had relationships with the U.S. Department of State, National Security Council and Pentagon, both were regular consultants with USAID, and they certainly worked with Roger Winter, the Pentagon’s secret weapon in Sudan.

On 25 September 2008, a Ukrainian freighter was seized by ‘pirates’ off the coast of Somalia and was held until a ransom of $3.2 million was paid on 5 February 2009. (Somali fishermen disenfranchised by international dumping of toxic [and possibly nuclear] wastes off Somalia are labeled ‘pirates’ when they fight for their rights and freedoms.) The MV Faina is registered in Belize, owned by a company registered in Panama and piloted by Ukrainians. The MV Faina carried 33 Soviet T-72 battle tanks, grenade-launchers, anti-aircraft guns and ammunition en route to Mombassa, Kenya, the Pentagon’s primary base on the east coast of Africa.

The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet monitored the Ukrainian ship during the four-month standoff, with the MV Faina pinned down by at least six U.S. and four European warships. The ship’s owner is Israeli national Vadim Alperin (alias Vadim Oltrena Alperin), said to be a MOSSAD agent involved with clandestine activities through offshore front companies and money laundering. The ship was unloaded in Mombassa on February 12, and the weapons are destined for Juba, South Sudan.

There are reports that weaponry also included tank munitions heads sporting deadly depleted uranium and that the final recipients are the Israeli-backed Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) ‘rebels’ in Darfur. Sudan has previously accused Israel of supporting ‘rebels’ in the Darfur war. International arms syndicates and dealers routinely transfer ‘Soviet-era’ arms for international organized crime, including covert military operations involving proxy militias and national governments in Sudan, Uganda, Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda.

1. See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Special Ops in Somalia?” Global Research, 7 February 2007.

Among the latest false realities being pushed upon the American people are the simplistic pictures of Black vs. Arab genocide in Darfur, and the proposed solution: a robust US-backed or US-led military intervention in Western Sudan. Increasing scrutiny is being focused upon the “Save Darfur” lobby and the Save Darfur Coalition; upon its founders, its finances, its methods and motivations and its truthfulness. In the spirit of furthering that examination we here present ten reasons to suspect that the “Save Darfur” campaign is a PR scam to justify US intervention in Africa.

1. It wouldn’t be the first Big Lie our government and media elite told us to justify a war.

Elders among us can recall the Tonkin Gulf Incident, which the US government deliberately provoked to justify initiation of the war in Vietnam. This rationale was quickly succeeded by the need to help the struggling infant “democracy” in South Vietnam, and the still useful “fight ‘em over there so we don’t have to fight ‘em over here” nonsense. More recently the bombings, invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq have been variously explained by people on the public payroll as necessary to “get Bin Laden” as revenge for 9-11, as measures to take “the world’s most dangerous weapons” from the hands of “the world’s most dangerous regimes”, as measures to enable the struggling Iraqi “democracy” stand on its own two feet, and necessary because it’s still better to “fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here”.

2. It wouldn’t even be the first time the U.S. government and media elite employed “genocide prevention” as a rationale for military intervention in an oil-rich region.

The 1995 US and NATO military intervention in Kosovo was supposedly a “peacekeeping” operation to stop a genocide. The lasting result of that campaign is Camp Bondsteel, one of the largest military bases on the planet. The U.S. is practically the only country in the world that maintains military bases outside its own borders. At just under a thousand acres, Camp Bondsteel offers the US military the ability to pre-position large quantities of equipment and supplies within striking distance of Caspian oil fields, pipeline routes and relevant sea lanes. It is also widely believed to be the site of one of the US’s secret prison and torture facilities.

3. If stopping genocide in Africa really was on the agenda, why the focus on Sudan with 200,000 to 400,000 dead rather than Congo with five million dead?

“The notion that a quarter million Darfuri dead are a genocide and five million dead Congolese are not is vicious and absurd,” according to Congolese activist Nita Evele. “What’s happened and what is still happening in Congo is not a tribal conflict and it’s not a civil war. It is an invasion. It is a genocide with a death toll of five million, twenty times that of Darfur, conducted for the purpose of plundering Congolese mineral and natural resources.”

More than anything else, the selective and cynical application of the term “genocide” to Sudan, rather than to the Congo where ten to twenty times as many Africans have been murdered reveals the depth of hypocrisy around the “Save Darfur” movement. In the Congo, where local gangsters, mercenaries and warlords along with invading armies from Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola engage in slaughter, mass rape and regional depopulation on a scale that dwarfs anything happening in Sudan, all the players eagerly compete to guarantee that the extraction of vital coltan for Western computers and cell phones, the export of uranium for Western reactors and nukes, along with diamonds, gold, copper, timber and other Congolese resources continue undisturbed.

Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young and George H.W. Bush both serve on the board of Barrcik Gold, one of the largest and most active mining concerns in war-torn Congo. Evidently, with profits from the brutal extraction of Congolese wealth flowing to the West, there can be no Congolese “genocide” worth noting, much less interfering with. For their purposes, U.S. strategic planners may regard their Congolese model as the ideal means of capturing African wealth at minimal cost without the bother of official U.S. boots on the ground.

4. It’s all about Sudanese oil.

Sudan, and the Darfur region in particular, sit atop a lake of oil. But Sudanese oil fields are not being developed and drilled by Exxon or Chevron or British Petroleum. Chinese banks, oil and construction firms are making the loans, drilling the wells, laying the pipelines to take Sudanese oil where they intend it to go, calling far too many shots for a twenty-first century in which the U.S. aspires to control the planet’s energy supplies. A U.S. and NATO military intervention will solve that problem for U.S. planners.

5. It’s all about Sudanese uranium, gum arabic and other natural resources.

Uranium is vital to the nuclear weapons industry and an essential fuel for nuclear reactors. Sudan possesses high quality deposits of uranium. Gum arabic is an essential ingredient in pharmaceuticals, candies and beverages like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and Sudanese exports of this commodity are 80% of the world’s supply. When comprehensive U.S. sanctions against the Sudanese regime were being considered in 1997, industry lobbyists stepped up and secured an exemption in the sanctions bill to guarantee their supplies of this valuable Sudanese commodity. But an in-country U.S. and NATO military presence is a more secure guarantee that the extraction of Sudanese resources, like those of the Congo, flow westward to the U.S. and the European Union.

6. It’s all about Sudan’s strategic location

Sudan sits opposite Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, where a large fraction of the world’s easily extracted oil will be for a few more years. Darfur borders on Libya and Chad, with their own vast oil resources, is within striking distance of West and Central Africa, and is a likely pipeline route. The Nile River flows through Sudan before reaching Egypt, and Southern Sudan water resources of regional significance too. With the creation of AFRICOM, the new Pentagon command for the African continent, the U.S. has made open and explicit its intention to plant a strategic footprint on the African continent. From permanent Sudanese bases, the U.S. military could influence the politics and ecocomies of Africa for a generation to come.

7. The backers and founders of the “Save Darfur” movement are the well-connected and well-funded U.S. foreign policy elite.

According to a copyrighted Washington Post story this summer

“The “Save Darfur (Coalition) was created in 2005 by two groups concerned about genocide in the African country – the American Jewish World Service and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum…

“The coalition has a staff of 30 with expertise in policy and public relations. Its budget was about $15 million in the most recent fiscal year…

“Save Darfur will not say exactly how much it has spent on its ads, which this week have attempted to shame China, host of the 2008 Olympics, into easing its support for Sudan. But a coalition spokeswoman said the amount is in the millions of dollars.”

Though the “Save Darfur” PR campaign employs viral marketing techniques, reaching out to college students, even to black bloggers, it is not a grassroots affair, as were the movement against apartheid and in support of African liberation movements in South Africa, Namibia, Angola and Mozambique a generation ago. Top heavy with evangelical Christians who preach the coming war for the end of the world, and with elements known for their uncritical support of Israeli rejectionism in the Middle East, the Save Darfur movement is clearly an establishment affair, a propaganda campaign that spends millions of dollars each month to manfacture consent for US military intervention in Africa under the cloak of stopping or preventing genocide.

8. None of the funds raised by the “Save Darfur Coalition”, the flagship of the “Save Darfur Movement” go to help needy Africans on the ground in Darfur, according to stories in both the Washington Post and the New York Times.

None of the money collected by Save Darfur goes to help the victims and their families. Instead, the coalition pours its proceeds into advocacy efforts that are primarily designed to persuade governments to act.

9. “Save Darfur” partisans in the U.S. are not interested in political negotiations to end the conflict in Darfur President Bush has openly and repeatedly attempted to throw monkey wrenches at peace negotiations to end the war in Darfur.

Even pro-intervention scholars and humanitarian organizations active on the ground have criticized the U.S. for endangering humanitarian relief workers, and for effectively urging rebel parties in Darfur to refuse peace talks and hold out for U.S. and NATO intervention on their behalf.

The PR campaign which depicts the conflict as strictly a racial affair, in which Arabs, who are generally despised in the US media anyway, are exterminating the black population of Sudan, is slick, seamless and attractive, and seems to leave no room for negotiation. But in fact, many of Sudan’s ‘Arabs”, even the Janjiweed, are also black. In any case, they were armed and unleashed by a government which has the power to disarm them if it chooses, and refusing to talk to that government’s negotiators is a sure way to avoid any settlement.

10. Blackwater and other U.S. mercenary contractors, the unofficial armed wings of the Republican party and the Pentagon are eagerly pitching their services as part of the solution to the Darfur crisis.

“Chris Taylor, head of strategy for Blackwater, says his company has a database of thousands of former police and military officers for security assignments. He says Blackwater personnel could set up perimeters and guard Darfurian villages and refugee camp in support of the U.N. Blackwater officials say it would not take many men to fend off the Janjaweed, a militia that is supported by the Sudanese government and attacks villages on camelback.”

Apparently Blackwater doesn’t need to come to the Congo, where hunger and malnutrition, depopulation, mass rape and the disappearance of schools, hospitals and civil society into vast law free zones ruled by an ever-changing cast of African proxies (like the son of the late and unlamented Idi Amin), all under a veil of complicit media silence already constitute the perfect business-friendly environment for siphoning off the vast wealth of that country at minimal cost.

Look for the adoption of the Congolese model across the wide areas of Africa that U.S. strategic planners call “ungoverned spaces”. Just don’t look expect to see details on the evening news, or hear about them from Oprah, George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.

When President George Bush met with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at the White House on October 30 they certainly discussed much more than “Uganda’s leadership in Somalia, the Lord’s Resistance Army, and President Museveni’s development plan for northern Uganda” or their “strong partnership to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS in Uganda,” as announced by the White House Office of the Press Secretary.

The role of Yoweri Museveni and his “government” in service to the Western economic neoliberalism and the shock doctrine of deconstruction and chaos is greatly misunderstood and deeply camouflaged by simplified establishment narratives like those above. Bush and Museveni discussed the U.S.-Uganda military relations and bilateral involvement in the ongoing wars in Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Congo). The “partnership to combat malaria and HIV/AIDS” is camouflage language for military vaccination and bio-warfare programs involving pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer, the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, USAID, and “humanitarian” philanthropies.¹ A vaccine for malaria was developed for the U.S. military some time ago and this is shared only with certain U.S. client state partners, though “clinical trials” have been undertaken in public using African “volunteers.”²

Museveni and Bush certainly discussed America’s escalating war in the Sahara desert, expanding petroleum operations across the region, U.S. Special Forces deployments and newly identified uranium resources in Uganda.³ Maybe they discussed the March 1, 1999 killing of eight foreign tourists at Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, a story that has not yet been critically unpacked.⁴ The “development plan for northern Uganda” is euphemistic language for the ongoing depopulation and massive natural resource extraction that today proceeds in northern Uganda in parallel with the genocide of the Acholi people and Uganda’s militarization in support of covert programs in Sudan and Congo.

The Darfur conflict rides along the fault line of continental warfare spread from Niger to Djibouti and Somalia, and from eastern Congo and Rwanda, through Uganda and Sudan, to Eritrea and the Red Sea. Congo is at war with Uganda and Rwanda. Ethiopia is at war with Somalia, and poised to reinvade Eritrea: there are massive troop build-ups on both sides of the Eritrean-Ethiopia border. Ethiopia, Uganda and Chad are the three “frontline” states militarily destabilizing Sudan. Uganda is internally and externally at war, has intervened secretly in Burundi, and the Ugandan military recently re-occupied towns in eastern Congo over petroleum. Rwanda is fighting in Eastern Congo, meddling in Burundi, and has some 2000 troops in Darfur. Burundi is militarily involved in Congo and soon to be in Somalia. Khartoum backs guerrilla armies in Uganda, Chad and Congo.

The U.S. is all over the place, with both covert and overt military programs. France, England, Canada, Belgium, Libya, Israel and China are all involved. All these conflicts are intertwined, and the targeted populations have allegiances and alliances dictated by the pre-colonial boundaries demarcated at the Berlin Conference of 1885 by the imperial doctrine of divide and conquer. In 1885 “Soudan” was synonymous with “Sahara” and “Darfur” was the center of power.⁵ Conflict involving U.S. covert forces and nomads in Niger and Nigeria, for example, impacts Sudan: the history of the Sahara revolves around the trans-Saharan influence of the Mahdi. In 1875 the Mahdi, Muhammad Ahmad, led the indigenous resistance against Britain. ‘Abdallah at-Ta‘ishi, the Mahdi’s “Khalifah” or successor, who took over as leader of the independent Sudan when the Mahdi died in June 1885, was a native of Darfur.⁶

PEACE IS WAR IS PEACEKEEPING

On October 24, 2007, the United Nations awarded Lockheed-Martin subsidiary Pacific Architects and Engineers a $250 million no-bid contract to provide “infrastructure” for the United Nations “peacekeeping” missions now unfolding in Sudan (Darfur), Somalia, and Chad/Central Africa Republic. The newly announced contract is to build five new camps in Sudan’s Darfur and Kordofan regions for 4,100 U.N. and African Union personnel. Lockheed Martin is the world’s largest and most secretive aerospace and defense corporation.

This is not Pacific Architects and Engineers’ first contract in Darfur, or in Africa’s “peacekeeping” missions. PAE won the contract for staffing the deeply compromised “Civilian Protection Monitoring Team” (CPMT) in Sudan under a U.S. State Department contract. In 2004, the CPMT office was being run by Brigadier General Frank Toney (retired), who was previously the commander of Special Forces for the United States Army; General Toney organized covert operations into Iraq and Kuwait in the first Gulf War.

Pratap Chaterjee reported in 2004 how “Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Bittrick, the deputy director of regional and security affairs for Africa at the State Department, flew to Ethiopia to hammer out an agreement to support African Union troops by committing to provide housing, office equipment, transport, and communications gear. This will be provided via an ‘indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity’ joint contract awarded to Dyncorp Corporation, and Pacific Architects & Engineers (PAE) worth $20.6 million.”⁷ PAE also set up MONUC operations in Congo, and continues to operate there; the total PAE involvement includes numerous intermediary contracts. In 2002, PAE/Daher won a $34 million air-services follow-on contract amidst complaints of a “lack of transparency and irregularities in the procurement system…confirmed by the bidding of the air-service contract with PAE/Daher.”⁸ Daher International is a French aerospace and defense corporation.⁹

Meanwhile, the “Save Darfur” advocates pressing military intervention in Darfur as a “humanitarian” gesture have escalated pressure in the face of mounting failures, including allegations that millions of “Save Darfur” dollars fundraised on a sympathy for victims platform have been misappropriated.

But the players, the private military companies, the arms dealers—and a handful of missing SRAM missiles armed with nuclear warheads dumped by an American B-52 before it crashed—are mostly unknown to the general public. These covert wars all involve different propaganda strategies to provide cover and deflect attention through “perception management”—managing the perceptions, stereotyping and creating false belief systems—of the North American and European public.

The numbers of refugees and internally displaced persons across the region are staggering and they are indicative of a cataclysmic regional crisis in sub-Saharan Africa. This is not because refugees, insurgency and guerrilla warfare are inherent to Africa: refugees and IDPs are big business for white systems of power that maintain structural violence based on profits and the globalization of poverty, terror and war. The numbers are staggering, and these are not merely statistics, they are about suffering human beings.

United Nations agencies report some 4,700,163 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Sudan—2,152,163 in Darfur and 2,276,000 in Northern Sudan—with some 686,311 refugees out of Sudan.

REGIONAL REFUGEES AND INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS¹⁰

      Burundi: 100,000 IDPs 396,541 refugees out

      Chad: 179,940 IDPs 36,300 refugees out

      Central Africa Rep.: 212,000 IDPs 71,685 refugees out

      Dem. Rep. of Congo: 1,400,000 IDPs 401,914 refugees out

      Eritrea: 32,000 IDPs 193,700 refugees out

      Ethiopia: ?200,000? IDPs 80,000 refugees out

      Kenya: 413,000 IDPs 5,356 refugees out

      Rwanda: ???? IDPs 92,966 refugees out

      Somalia: 700,000 IDPs 464,253 refugees out

      Sudan: 4,703,163 IDPs 686,311 refugees out

      Uganda: 1,310,000 IDPs 21,752 refugees out

Is Kenya at war? Sure looks like it. Unreported anywhere are the massive petroleum concessions and exploration projects in Kenya’s remote Samburu and Turkana districts. (For $5000 apiece you can purchase reports like “Petroleum Potential of Lake Turkana Area” from international oil and gas consultants Beicip-Franlab.¹¹) G.H.W. Bush’s old Swedish pal Adolph Lundin and Lundin Petroleum signed an exploration contract for the Turkana region in June 2007.¹²

While the United Nations lists some 200,000 IDPs in Ethiopia, the Norwegian Refugee Council’s Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (iDMC) reports: “[r]elatively little is known about the extent and nature of conflict-induced internal displacement in Ethiopia.” There are 92,966 refugees out of Rwanda, if we can trust the iDMC numbers, and an “indeterminate” number of IDPs. Refugee and IDP statistics, like mortality figures, are highly politicized. The situation in Ethiopia today is cataclysmic and the United Nations and the vast network of profit-based NGOs operating in Ethiopia are complicit in genocide because they do not stand up against that regime in fear of losing business.¹³

These humanitarian emergencies involve massive depopulation and death, internally displaced persons and trans-national refugees, all of which provide a lucrative business opportunity for Western “relief” and “development” organizations. The business of AID is a racket. Weapons sales are a racket. The people who suffer are different from the industries, the providers of services, equipment and expertise who profit from these crises. Like most weaponry, landmines are predominantly manufactured in white economies of North America and Europe and, scandalously, it is the companies from the same white economies who have a lock on UN landmine removal contracts worth billions of dollars a year. The so-called “humanitarian relief” business is an industry that relies on the creation of markets. Millions of people across the region are dying, while millions more are homeless, set adrift in a sea of nowhere, with no rights, no possessions, no protection and very little prospect for survival; their only hopes come from the false belief that the Western “humanitarian” AID enterprise is designed to rescue them.

The engagement of the world’s premier war-making industries—Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Bechtel, SAIC—behind and within a so-called “peacekeeping” platform is not new, and something is seriously wrong with this picture.

THE ‘SAVE DARFUR’ NARRATIVE

“Save Darfur” is the predominant propaganda front running on Africa and it has overwhelmed the public consciousness with deceptions. In this establishment narrative Arabs on horseback, the Janjaweed, backed by the Sudan government seated in Khartoum, are the purveyors of genocide. This mirrors the establishment narrative of Rwanda, 1994, which said that the Hutus and the nasty Interahamwe militias committed genocide against the Tutsis in 100 days of killing with machetes. The Rwanda genocide narrative—combined with the narrative about “humanitarian” intervention in Yugoslavia, where the final blow to dismember the country came with the NATO bombing campaign—set the stage for the Darfur genocide narrative.

All over the United States, Britain and Canada advocates and activists who claim to be concerned about human rights, and even those who otherwise would not get involved, have supported the “Save Darfur” movement, a political movement similar to the anti-Apartheid movement mobilized against South Africa in the 1980s. The “Save Darfur” movement has resulted in a huge outpouring of funds, and it has mobilized support from people in all walks of life, and across the political spectrum, on the “never again” platform of “stopping genocide.”

Hollywood personalities dubbed “actorvists,” including Mia Farrow, Don Cheadle and George Clooney, have helped to whip up the “Save Darfur” hysteria. From Elie Wiesel to Barak Obama, people are “outraged” by genocide that the Bush Administration, we are told, is reluctant to stop. And it is hysteria, in the true definition of the word, but it did not simply rise out of a sudden concern for a bunch of Africans in some far-off God-forsaken place (as it is portrayed).

At a “Voices for Darfur” fundraiser held on October 21, 2007 at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, for example, the local chapter of the Congregation B’Nai Israel Darfur Action coalition, raised over $14,000 for “humanitarian” aid to Darfur. The B’Nai Israel Save Darfur Coalition had a broad array of public and organizational support, including other Jewish organizations, Smith College, Northampton Mayor Claire Higgins, Massachusetts’ Senator Stan Rosenberg and Representative Peter Kocot. The campaign organizers claim that “more than 90% goes to direct-on-the-ground AID.” Working with big humanitarian groups like Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children, it is impossible that 90% of funds will hit the ground in Darfur.¹⁴

Behind the “Save Darfur” movement are fundamentalist organizations and think tanks with a deeply nationalistic, militaristic, religious fundamentalist agenda. The Center for Security Policy, for example, supports the “star wars” Strategic Defense Initiative, Homeland Security—which is nothing more than expanding militarism and emasculated public rights—and the Biometric Security Project. The BSP centers around emerging biological technologies that will be used to register, identify, monitor, track and control each and every U.S. citizen. They call it “identity assurance,” it involves state-of-the-art recognition equipment, sensors and security technologies, and it is a central component of the evolving national security and “counter-terrorism” apparatus.¹⁵

The Center for Security Policy is the nerve center of the U.S. military and intelligence apparatus, a deeply nationalist, neoliberal think-tank and flak organization promoting the all-out attack against non-cooperative governments—dubbed “rogue states”—peripheral to Western economic control. These, of course, are primarily Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria, North Korea and Cuba. Zimbabwe is a special case that has joined the list to some degree. What these states have in common is that they are all targeted for divestment by the Center for Security Policy brainchild, divestterror.org. Sudan is another of the “rogue states” targeted.

The establishment narrative on Darfur motivates U.S. citizens to take action to “Save Darfur,” thus facilitating popular support for heightened U.S. military involvement. The truth is that the United States military is already there, in its various incarnations, and the United States is involved in atrocities.

THE UGANDA NARRATIVE

In the northern Uganda region—involving South Sudan and northeastern Congo—another conflict has boiled for over 21 years between the government Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF), led by Yoweri Museveni, and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony. This war offers yet another one-sided Western establishment narrative that says that Kony and the LRA—always described as a Christian fanatical cult that captures and drugs children—is the primary problem in northern Uganda. (Usually African savages are not Christian enough for America’s liking; here we find that they are too Christian.)

The establishment narrative has been furthered across the popular culture, in everything from Vanity Fair to the BBC to the journal The National Catholic Weekly (America). The newly established ENOUGH Project (ENOUGH “genocide” and “not on my watch” etc. etc.) picked up the mantle of LRA atrocities and, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, has supported the establishment narrative which shields the Museveni government from the kind of criticism and international action that is called for in keeping with the scale of the atrocities the Uganda government is responsible for. Amnesty International and Human Rights have produced disinformation, in some cases, Rwanda and Yugoslavia being the most notable.

The Museveni war machine and its state terror apparatus have perpetrated massive atrocities in the region and it has evolved into genocide against the Acholi, Teso and Lango people of the north. The indigenous Acholi people have been forced onto concentration camps over the past 21 years, and these camps have become places of death. In the establishment narrative, the people are always the victims of Kony’s LRA “rebellion.”

Human Rights Watch has addressed torture and government complicity in atrocities in Uganda, and other problems, but they have rarely named names or corporations and they almost never link the conflict or the atrocities to Western interests. One massive report on Northern Uganda details criminal government actions, but the recommendations sections effectively sanction structural violence and white supremacy.¹⁶ The net effect of these policy and “human rights” positions is complicity in genocide and genocide denial on Uganda.

Contrary to the proliferation of propaganda always attributing Kony’s LRA with child abductions—another example of Western Orientalism that essentializes Africa to serve political purposes—is research showing that many LRA abductions are short term with children returning home from LRA abductions in less than three weeks. Further, many children who fight with the LRA have joined by choice, and they do so willingly.¹⁷ In “Childhood’s End” (Vanity Fair, 2006) Christopher Hitchens described the LRA as a “grotesque zombie-like militia…that has set a standard of cruelty and ruthlessness…” American troops that have committed atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan, no less brutal or gruesome or masochistic, would never be described this way.

Yoweri Museveni and his business and military partners are responsible for millions of deaths, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Eastern Congo. Museveni and his generals were the primary backers of Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba and the Movement for the Liberation of Congo. With UPDF support, Bemba’s MLC perpetrated massive atrocities under the covert military operation, Effacer le Tableau (Erasing the Board)—a scorched earth policy amounting to genocide against the Mbuti pygmies of Eastern Congo.¹⁸

The U.S. military invasion of Zaire (now Congo), involved U.S. covert forces, U.S. military communications, logistical and weapons support, and Ugandan and Rwandan forces. Humvees, C-130’s and black-skinned U.S. Special Forces entered South Sudan and northeastern Congo through the Gulu and Arua Districts of Uganda, the heart of Acholiland and the center of atrocities against the Acholi people.¹⁹

Ugandan and British interests living mostly in Britain and aligned with the former dictator Idi Amin have always backed the Lord’s Resistance Army and the West Nile Bank Front; support also came from Saudi Arabia and Qatar (the Qatar General Petroleum Corporation is involved in Sudan’s oil sector and has partnered in various international enterprises with Norwegian, Japanese and French corporations). Idi Amin, the brutal dictator, lived out his life in luxury in Saudi Arabia (d. 2003). The LRA stepped up its military actions in parallel with the UPDF invasion of Zaire (1996), and the subsequent years of warfare and plunder in Congo (1998-present).

According to the investigations of the United Nations and the humanitarian law work of lawyer Karen Parker, the war in Uganda involves massive rapes, killing, tortures, and extrajudicial executions as a policy by the Ugandan military. Some 1.3 million people are displaced in the Gulu, Kitgum and Pader districts of northern Uganda (there were 1.7 million IDPs in March 2007). There are over 73 camps with from 1000 to 50,000 people in them, all forcibly displaced by UPDF soldiers, with over 350,000 people out of some 400,000 people displaced from the Gulu district alone.²⁰

THE U.S.-UGANDA INVASION OF ZAIRE

The forced displacements of Acholi people began with Museveni’s ascension to power in 1986, but major forced displacements occurred throughout the 1990’s and again in 2002-2003. However, there was a massive displacement operation in 1996 that appears to have been coordinated in part with the planned U.S. invasion of Zaire from Northern Uganda and Rwanda.

The UPDF Army barracks at Masindi and airstrip at Gulu, both in Northern Uganda, served as the staging grounds for the U.S. invasion of Zaire. The Museveni government organized the closure of northern Uganda in October 1996 ostensibly because of heightened LRA attacks. The UPDF, in chronological coincidence with the U.S. invasion, forced hundreds of thousands of Acholis into concentration camps in the fall of 1996, often by bombing and burning villages and murdering, beating, raping and threatening those who would not comply.

According to testimony from eyewitnesses, on Oct 26, 1996 the top Ugandan brass behind the invasion of Zaire met at the village of Paraa, in the Murchison Falls National Park, near Lake Albert, in the Gulu District. At the meeting were: [1] UPDF Brigadier General Moses Ali—Idi Amin’s right hand man who later became Minister of Internal Affairs, Minister for Disaster Preparedness, and Deputy Prime Minister in the Museveni administration; [2] Museveni’s half-brother Salim Saleh; [3] then Colonel James Kazini; and [4] Dr. Eric Adroma—head of Uganda National Parks. Salim Saleh is perhaps the leading agent of terror in the UPDF Zaire/Congo wars, but both Saleh and commander James Kazini led UPDF troops involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, and acts of genocide involving millions of people in Eastern Congo (1996-2007).

The meeting was ostensibly about security and it was announced that due to a recent LRA rebel attack at Paraa, the UPDF would be placing parts of Northern Uganda off limits to all non-military personnel. (LRA rebels committed the Paraa attack; UPDF troops arrived on the scene quickly and looted bodies but did not pursue the LRA.) The main road from Karuma to the border town of Pakwach was thereafter closed. This road apparently served as a primary transport route for Ugandan and non-Ugandan military—including black U.S. Special Forces—who invaded Zaire.²¹

On November 6, 1996, Bill Clinton was elected. Around 10 November 1996 an armored 4×4 Humvee (HUMMWV)—heavily rigged with sophisticated communications equipment inside and out—was encountered carrying two black U.S. special forces in the Murchison Falls region: the soldiers were wearing UPDF uniforms. Two busloads of black U.S. Special Forces were encountered at a UPDF checkpoint on the Karuma-Pakwach road; wearing civilian clothes, with duffel bags, the muscled and crew cut “civilians” showed U.S. passports and claimed they were “doctors” heading to the tiny Gulu hospital. From November 21-23 Boeing C-130 military aircraft passed over the region every 30 minutes, 24 hours a day, heading both north and south. The C-130’s apparently landed at Gulu airstrip—closed by the Museveni government for a two-week period—and offloaded military equipment then moved by roads—closed by the UPDF—to the border. Some C-130’s were charted on a course believed to take them to Goma, Zaire. From mid-November to February 1997 access to northwestern Uganda regions was highly restricted. On 1 March 1997 another wave of C-130’s passed over the region. The UPDF used the LRA threat as cover for massive military operations involving the invasion of Zaire for the United States of America.¹⁹

The in-country U.S. Ambassador to Uganda at the time was E. Michael Southwick (October 1994-August 1997). Oil surveys began in 1998 and the entire Northwestern Uganda region is now designated as oil concessions controlled by Heritage Oil and Gas, Hardman Oil and Tullow Oil, three Anglo-American companies connected to British mercenary Tony Buckingham (founder of he mercenary firms Sandline International and Executive Outcomes) and his partners.²² Nexant, a Bechtel subsidiary, is involved with the trans-Uganda-Kenya pipeline. South African firm Energem—tied to Tony Buckingham through Anthony Texeira, the brother-in-law of Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba—is also involved. Another Energem and Buckingham affiliated company tight with the Museveni regime is Branch Energy, involved with the oil pipeline and mining in Uganda.

On September 5, 2007, UPDF troops—and rebels reportedly aligned with Jean-Pierre Bemba—had occupied the Congo’s oil- and gold-rich Semliki Basin on the western shores of Lake Albert. Heavily armed foreign forces occupied the villages of Aru, Mahagi, Fataki, Irengeti and the Ruwenzori mountains. The international press and the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC) remained completely silent about the Ugandan incursions. By September 8, 2007, Ugandan troops were heavily massed on the Congo border while Kabila and Museveni were signing oil and gold sharing agreements in Tanzania. UPDF forces and “rebel” troops alleged to be Bemba’s remained in Congo as of October 25. The MONUC information offices were claiming by mid-October that UPDF had pulled out, but Congolese citizens in eastern Congo continued to report a significant UPDF military occupation.²³

The China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company is also involved in the Uganda-Kenya pipeline, offering an interesting comparison for people concerned about China’s involvement in atrocities in the Darfur region. And, after much scrambling, Libya was cut out of the Kenya-Uganda pipeline deals.²⁴ The petroleum sector in Libya involves U.S., Canadian, and European companies.

Uganda’s representation at the International Criminal Court exploring war crimes in Congo has included at least two very high-profile lawyers from Foley Hoag LLP, an influential Washington law firm deeply entrenched in the proliferation of the mainstream narratives and the victor’s justice doled out—through the ICTY and ICTR tribunals—on Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The Pentagon seconded its lawyers from the Judge Advocate General (JAG) Corp to the ICTR to “try” those unfortunate “enemies” both arbitrarily and selectively accused of genocide.²⁵

The people most responsible for atrocities in the region—unprecedented human bloodletting, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide—are protected. These include Yoweri Museveni, Salim Saleh, Paul Kagame, James Kazini, Moses Ali, James Kabarebe, Taban Amin, Jean-Pierre Bemba, Laurent Nkunda, Meles Zenawi… a long list of people whose culpability is without question, many of whom have been named for atrocities again and again. U.S. Special Operations forces know what happened and should be deposed under oath in a legitimate International Criminal Court, which at present does not exist, and is not in the making. Ditto for Madeleine Albright, Anthony Lake, Thomas Pickering, Susan Rice, John Prendergast, General William Wald, General Frank Toney, Walter Kansteiner, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Holbroke, Roger Winter, Frank G. Wisner, Andrew Young… another short list.

Foley Hoag LLP is also tied to the U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council. On May 6, 2002 in Washington D.C. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and wife Janet were special guests at U.S.-Uganda Friendship Council event sponsored by members Coke, Pfizer and Chevron-Texaco. Museveni also met with President Bush at the White House. Coke director Kathleen Black is a principle in the Hearst media empire, while Coke directors Warren Buffet and Barry Diller are directors of the Washington Post Company, and these are the media institutions that whitewash client regimes, corporate plunder and Pentagon actions. Of course, Coca Cola covets the gum Arabic potential of Darfur, and Coke is a client of Andrew Young’s PR firm Goodworks International. Uganda’s image is sanitized by one of the world’s largest PR firms, London’s Hill & Knowlton. In 2005 Uganda spent some $700,000 on a Hill & Knowlton contract to facilitate and “encourage dialogue between the Ugandan government and people like Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, Oxfam.”²⁶

THE RWANDA NARRATIVE

Museveni’s bush war began in 1980. Paul Kagame, current President of Rwanda, was Museveni’s Director of Military Intelligence in the mid-1980’s. Museveni and Kagame led the invasion of Rwanda in 1990. The two military commanders utilized terrorist tactics that assigned blame for atrocities they committed—against both their enemies and their own people—on their enemies. They used psychological operations, embedded international reporters, and fabrication of massacres. These tactics have continued to the present.

While Rwanda is billed as a major “success story” of recovery and development after a devastating genocide—see for example the PR “documentary” film Rwanda Rising produced by Andrew Young’s Goodworks International—the country is ruled with an iron-fist and a finely tuned intelligence and torture apparatus involved in political assassinations, suppression of information and disappearances. Huge areas of Rwanda were entirely depopulated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front and UPDF as they hammered away at Rwanda beginning in October 1990. The invasion culminated in a coup d’etat that succeeded, with broad U.S. military support, in capturing Kigali in July of 1994.

From 1994 to the present President Paul Kagame has used the genocide card and the establishment narrative to institutionalize repression, criminalize or assassinate anyone who challenges the regime, and further depopulate rural areas for “development” benefiting corporate interests.

Another member of the U.S.-Uganda Friendship council is the Honorable Andrew Young, former Mayor of Atlanta and U.S. Ambassador. Andrew Young and his firm Goodworks International have helped whitewash the image of the Rwanda government and its state apparatus of terror. Andrew Young, Quincy Jones and other wealthy Americans are building (have built) mansions on the shores of Rwanda’s Lake Mwazi in areas where peasants were driven off the land or killed by the Kagame terror machine before, during and after 1994. State terror and depopulation is ongoing along Lake Kivu and in the Volcanoes National Parks regions for methane and high-end tourism development.²⁷

Back to the refugees and IDPs question, the United Nations recognized some 650,000 IDPs in “makeshift camps” in Rwanda in 1998 and 1999, in the northwestern prefectures of Ruhengeri and Gisenyi. These IDPs were categorized as “mostly Hutu” and forcibly resettled through implementation of Rwanda’s “National Habitat Policy, or “villagisation” policy, of December 1996, which provides for the relocation of all Rwandans living in scattered homesteads into government-created villages.²⁸ While the UN ceased to recognize these people in Rwanda as internally displaced, in 2003 there remained 200,000 families living in IDP conditions.²⁹ What is their status today?

Rwanda gains currency and good press through big HIV/AIDS projects run by Paul Farmer but funded by the Clinton AIDS foundation. Rwanda was overthrown by and for the Pentagon on Clinton’s watch. Hillary Clinton toured Uganda in July 1997, wore African clothes, danced African dances, and spoke about “democracy” and “development” and a “partnership” against HIV/AIDS.

The Kagame regime has recently awarded petroleum concessions to Canada’s Vangold Resources for the project titled “White Elephant” in northern Rwanda—2700 sq. kilometers of land depopulated by the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army between 1990 and 2007.³⁰ Contracted to provide “feasibility studies” of petroleum infrastructural development in Rwanda is the San Diego firm Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).³¹

SAIC has ongoing collaborations with Bechtel—another of the world’s most secretive aerospace technology, energy infrastructure and defense contractors—both known for their involvement in U.S. beyond top-secret “black” programs; SAIC also works closely with DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.³² Recent SAIC directors have included: U.S. Navy Admiral B.R. Inman (Ret.); U.S. Army General W.A. Downing (Ret.); and U.S. Air Force General J.A. Welch (Ret.). SAIC also has an ongoing collaboration with the multibillion-dollar pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS).³³ Unsurprisingly, through shared directorships, BMS is economically and politically aligned with the New York Times Corporation. SAIC has also been flagged for involvement in highly questionable U.S. mercenary activities and human rights violations in Africa.³⁴

Petroleum, defense and mining interests connected to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International programs in “gorilla conservation” led to the production of high-tech satellite prospecting data, gathered by remote sensing over-flights (1994-2000), delivered to the Rwandan Ministry of Defense.³⁵

The Pentagon has been involved in building military bases in Rwanda, installing military and civilian communications infrastructure, and training Rwandan Defense Forces; a military-communications radar installation has been constructed with U.S. support on Mt. Karisimbi in Ruhengeri Province.³⁶ The installation is being built by the Rwanda Ministry of Defense in partnership with the “Rwandan” company Terracom SPRL and Rwandatel. Terracom is owned by U.S. businessman Greg Wyler; Rwandatel is 99%-owned subsidiary.³⁷

It is believed that Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) sent to Darfur on the African Union “peacekeeping” mission include black U.S. Special Forces disguised as RDF—just as the black U.S. Special Forces were disguised as UPDF during the invasion of Zaire.

Andrew Young is widely lauded as a leader of the African-American civil rights movement and ally of Martin Luther King Jr., claims that were specious to begin with. “In Rwanda Rising,” reads the PR promo for the film, Andrew Young, “a former United Nations Ambassador, Civil Rights leader and top aide to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. documented the amazing transformation taking place in Rwanda today, including the country’s remarkable story of reconciliation despite the 1994 Genocide.”³⁸

Rwanda Rising opened the 15th Annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival February 8, 2007. “Fifteen years into the Pan African Film and Arts Festival and we continue to showcase the important stories of our brothers and sisters on the Continent,” Festival Director Ayuko Babu said. “Having Rwanda Rising open this year’s festival is keeping in that tradition while making sure that we stay connected to our roots in Africa.”³⁸

THE ROOTS OF STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE IN AFRICA

Lockheed Martin is a California-based aerospace and defense giant involved in classified black programs that are beyond “top-secret” and shielded from government oversight. In September 2003, CNN—a corporate-military “news” agency deeply embedded with the Pentagon—reported “[a]ccording to the U.S. Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA) classified or black programs account for about $23.2 billion or 17 percent of the 2004 budget request for the Department of Defense.”

According to United Nations spokeswoman Michele Montas the six-month Darfur contract with Lockheed-Martin subsidiary Pacific Architect Engineers, Inc. was awarded without competitive bidding “because of complex requirements and a short timeline.”

Reporting from the United Nations, Inner City Press said the terms of the contract will not be public and the United Nations has violated numerous UN charter laws in the tendering of this award.³⁹

The no-bid award process followed the United Nation’s issuance of an official “Expressions of Interest” notice on October 9, 2007. “The United Nations is seeking Expressions of Interest (EOI) from experienced Multi Functional Logistics Services (MFLS) contractors,” the UN’s EOI notice reads, “for the provision of a wide range of services at headquarters, logistic bases, military and police camps, airfields and water resources at various locations in any or all of the following: the Darfur Region of Sudan, Chad/Central African Republic (CAR), and Somalia.”

Inner City Press reported that the EOI solicitation, made after the rules had already been waived to allow the transfer of $250 million to Lockheed Martin for six months in Darfur, is intended to try to clean up the process after-the-fact.³⁹

Another multinational aerospace and defense corporation directly benefiting from this regional U.S. war is Boeing Aircraft Corporation. The U.S. military used Boeing Chinook helicopters in the U.S. invasion of Somalia in 2006. Tom Pickering, former U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, is senior vice president for International Relations and a member of the Boeing Executive Council since January 2001. Pickering played a decisive role in the Clinton Administration overthrow of Rwanda (1990-1994) and Congo (1996-1997). He is a leading advocate for the “Save Darfur” propaganda. He is also a member of the Africa Society of the National Summit on Africa along with Ed Royce (R-CA), former U.S. Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker (R-KS), Donald Payne (D-NJ), and Andrew Young.

While the New York Times reported in December 2006 that the Ethiopian invasion of Somalia began in late December, military involvement of U.S. covert forces had been ongoing, and was heightened significantly in the early spring of 2006 when the U.S. Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency openly complained about cross purposes in Somalia. Private military companies were all over Somalia, as were known international arms syndicates, including of course the criminal networks of John Bredenkamp, one of Britain’s fifty richest tycoons and one of the primary financial backers behind the rise and fall of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

John Bredenkamp reportedly acquired three SRAM missiles with nuclear warheads jettisoned in shallow water off the coast of Somalia by a U.S.A.F. B-52 that soon after crashed into the Indian Ocean near the U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia. The U.S. invasion of Somalia is believed to have been partly an aborted attempt to recover the lost nukes—called “broken arrows” in Pentagon speak. While the story of the dumped nukes “lost” by Dick Cheney has received some attention, no one has publicly identified John Bredenkamp as the likely weapons dealer involved.⁴⁰

COVERT OPS IN SOMALIA

The war in Somalia dates back to deep U.S. involvement in the 1980s, where major oil concessions were awarded to four Western multinational petroleum giants: Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Philips petroleum. The infusion of Western “AID” provoked destabilization of Somalia, leading to the U.S. military invasion that culminated in the October 3, 1993 mission where scores of U.S. Special Operations Forces were killed when their Blackhawk helicopter was shot down over the capital city, Mogadishu. The mythology of U.S. involvement was indelibly inscribed in the popular consciousness through the Hollywood/Pentagon film Blackhawk Down. Part of the consistent propaganda on Africa is that “the U.S. does not want to get involved and potentially face another Somalia.” But the U.S. pullout of Somalia occurred in perfect synchronicity with the heightened military involvement in Rwanda (1994).

U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) did not cease Special Ops deployments in Somalia with the U.S. withdrawal and covert operations have proceeded on and off, with heightened activity through the late 1990’s. The Pentagon confirmed in November 2006 that SOCOM forces were in Somalia as of October “providing military advice to Ethiopian and Somali forces on the ground.” The U.S. Navy moved “additional forces” into waters off the Somali coast, where the Pentagon said they “conducted security missions, monitoring maritime traffic and intercepting and interrogating crew on suspicious ships.” These included the USS Ramage guided missile destroyer, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, the USS Bunker Hill and USS Anzio guided missile cruisers, and the USS Ashland amphibious landing ship.⁴¹ On June 2, 2007, a U.S. Navy destroyer shelled northern Somalia. Somali media reported that News media reported that the strikes destroyed farms, flattened hilltops and killed or injured an unknown number of villagers.⁴²

The British Navy’s newest warship HMS Bulwark was also stationed off the Somali coast in early 2006. The HMS Bulwark deployed to the Indian Ocean on 9 January 2006 for the first live operation of this “unique Commando Assault ship” (as it is described by the British Navy).⁴³

However, sources in Kenya and Eritrea reported “snatch and grab” terrorist operations involving massacres and torture that were run by SOCOM forces inside Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. There are at least 52,000 U.S. special operations forces on active duty and reserve military worldwide, including SEALs, Green Berets and commando-style troops from the 10th Mountain Division and others.

At least three U.S. Navy guided missile destroyers were operating off Somalia in October and November 2007. The U.S.S. Porter, U.S.S. Arleigh Burke and U.S.S. James E. Williams were operating—sinking “pirate ships” and “terrorist” vessels—as part of the Combined Maritime Forces Task Force headquartered in Bahrain.⁴⁴

The establishment narrative is that Ethiopia invaded Somalia to displace Al-Qaeda terrorists and check the spread of Islamic fundamentalism, both of which are propaganda themes that misrepresent the reality of U.S. and allied military interventions.

Ethiopia is considered an essential partner of the U.S. in its “War on Terrorism” and Ethiopian bases have been used for attacks on Somalia. In 2003, the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division (SOCOM) completed a three-month program to train an Ethiopian army division in “counter-terrorism tactics”—code language for covert operations. Operations are coordinated through the Combined Joint Task Forces-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) base in Djibouti. In January 2004, SOCOM forces from the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment replaced the 10th Mountain Division forces at a new base “Camp United” established at Hurso, northwest of Dire Dawa, near the border with Somalia. Since 2003, under the U.S. State Department-sponsored Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance (ACOTA) program, CJTF-HOA provided instruction to thousands of Ethiopian soldiers at a base in Legedadi. CJTF-HOA forces from the U.S Army’s 478th Civil Affairs Battalion also operated in Ethiopia (Somalia) in and around Dire Dawa, Galadi and Dolo Odo, among other areas.⁴⁵

Ethiopia seeks to control Somalia to gain access to a much-needed deepwater seaport. Ethiopia’s oil concessions are contiguous with the oil reserves in Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and Yemen. Hunt Oil, the Chinese National Petroleum Company and many others are active in Ethiopia.⁴⁶ Hunt’s $18-million refinery across the waters in Yemen was officially dedicated by then U.S. Vice-President G.H.W. Bush in April, 1986. In remarks during the event, Bush emphasized the critical value of supporting U.S. corporate efforts to develop and safeguard potential oil reserves in the region.⁴⁷

The U.S. military used and uses Ethiopian air bases modernized by infusions of millions of dollars of “AID” funds to launch attacks against Somalia. Ethiopia now has the largest standing army on the continent and this was achieved through the conversions of millions of dollars in “AID” to weapons and militarization; even “debt forgiveness”—where foreign “debt” was canceled—benefited the militarization of Ethiopia, and the same occurred in Uganda.See: Ituri: Covered in Blood (part VII), Human Rights Watch, July 2003. U.S. spy satellites were used provide intelligence to Ethiopian troops as they swept across the Oganden basin and Somalia. Presidents Bush and Zenawi both denied that the invasion was coordinated and well planned, and both denied the involvement of the U.S.

The Ethiopian government retained former U.S. Republican house majority leader Dick Armey as a lobbyist in Washington to whitewash the Ethiopian regimes’ crimes.⁴⁸

ETHIOPIA’S GENOCIDES

The Ogaden, Oromo and Anuak regions of Ethiopia have seen massive military occupation and state repression. The Ethiopian government of Meles Zenawi has perpetrated mass starvation and scorched earth policy in the region. There has been very little international media coverage and most is favorable the Zenawi regime or pressing the upside-down stories about “relief” and “starvation” that serve the Western “humanitarian” business sector. The Ogaden basin is a bloodbath today. Applying the same legal standards as in Darfur, all three Ethiopian regions qualify as ongoing genocides against indigenous people.⁴⁹ Failure to apply the genocide standards constitutes genocide denial.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1778 (2007) on 25 September 2007 established the United Nations Mission in the Central African Republic and Chad (MINURCAT). According to the UN’s October 2007 Expression Of Interest, “[i]n it’s Presidential Statement of 30 April 2007, the Security Council requested the Secretary General to ‘immediately begin appropriate contingency planning for a United Nations mission to Somalia’. At this early stage it is planned to have a UN logistics base at Mombassa, Kenya to support the main supply line from Mombassa to Kismayo, Mogadishu and Hobyo, which will serve as secondary logistics bases in Somalia. At this early stage the number and location of these sites is unknown, but it is envisaged that approximately 24,000 personnel may be required.”

Ethiopia’s war in Somalia has taxed the government drawing widespread criticism. The U.S. is pressing for an African Union mission as a proxy force to replace the Ethiopian troops and further U.S. interests. Mombasa, Kenya is a U.S. military port. The U.S. war in Somalia is ongoing. More than 100 U.S. military “trainers” supervised “combat training” of two Burundian “African Union” battalions (1700 troops) in Bujumbura, Burundi, in advance of their deployment in Somalia expected in November 2007. French military also provided training, while the U.S. and France both are providing logistical and telecommunications support. Burundian troops are also in Darfur.⁵⁰ On November 28, 2004, the Bush White House issued a document announcing a cooperative agreement with Burundi, Guyana and Liberia preventing the International Criminal Court from proceeding against U.S. personnel operating in these countries.⁵¹

In March 2007 the Pentagon deployed an additional 150 SOCOM Forces in Uganda. The troops were part of the Combined Joint Task Force Horn-of-Africa, an “anti-terrorist naval force” deployed around the Horn of Africa with support points in Bahrain and Djibouti. Ugandan sources divulged that the SOCOM troops would be dispersed “around the country” to “support UPDF troops” and “provide support to distribute humanitarian aid.” It was openly reported that the SOCOM are “possibly training the South Sudanese army, which has just signed an agreement for this with its Ugandan counterpart, strengthening Ugandan capacity to fight terrorism.” The U.S. military has also modernized the old Entebbe airport for UPDF operations, and the Entebbe airport supports a small but permanent U.S. military contingent.⁵²

It is believed that U.S. SOCOM troops are operating in blood-drenched Eastern Congo. Ugandan opposition sources have reported that SOCOM forces in UPDF uniforms have joined the more than 2000 Pentagon-trained UPDF forces sent by Museveni to Somalia. The UPDF troops operating in Somalia behind a “peacekeeping” propaganda front have been accused of widespread atrocities. More than 1000 people die daily in Eastern Congo where fighting since 1996 has claimed at least 7 million lives. The Democratic Republic of Congo has seen multiple genocide campaigns, and multiple genocide denials are ongoing.

SOCOM forces have been openly reported in Niger, where operations are billed as “humanitarian” and “human rights” training of Nigerien troops.⁵³ But the insurgency and “rebellion” by the Tuareg and Toubou nomads has always been about uranium and depopulation: Canadian and Chinese companies have recently gotten involved but Esso (Exxon), Japan and French corporations were exploiting the Agadez and Air regions in the 1970’s and 1980’s (at least), dumping radioactive sickness and social devastation on another indigenous population.⁵⁴ Niger is the poorest country in the world. Yet another genocide?

Exxon, Elf and Hunt Oil are in Niger for oil. Barrick Gold is also in Niger, and in Guniea, Burkina Faso, Tanzania, Madagascar and Mali; through their partnership with Anglo-Ashanti, Barrick is responsible for atrocities and plunder in eastern Congo. Directors of the G.H.W. Bush-connected Barrick Gold include former U.S. Senator Howard Baker (R-TN), whose wife, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, has been an outspoken advocate for immediate action on Darfur.

“I was in the Senate at the time of Rwanda,” said Kassebaum Baker at a speech in 2006 where discussed Darfur. Kassebaum Baker served as chairwoman of the Foreign Relation Committee’s Subcommittee on African Affairs. “We were all aghast at what was taking place there [Rwanda], but I must say no one really knew what to do about it,” Kassebaum Baker said.⁵⁵

The Bakers are on the advisory board for the nationalist think-tank Partnership for a Secure America—another policy-formulating-perception-management-force behind the “Save Darfur” movement—along with a stellar cast of corporate executives involved in war and plunder in Africa.⁵⁶ Most notable of these are Frank G. Wisner, Richard Holbroke, Anthony Lake, Thomas Pickering, Carla Hills and Sam Nunn. Wisner was also on the National Security Council under Clinton, along with the International Crisis Group (ICG) Special Advisor and ENOUGH co-chair John Prendergast. Wisner’s co-directors of the American International Group include: Marshall Cohen, a director of the Bush-connected Barrick Gold Corporation; Clinton Cabinet members William Cohen and Richard Holbrooke; and Carla Hills, NAFTA negotiator and director of Chevron-Texaco and the ICG. Partnership for a Secure America advisory board members Zbigniew Brzezinski, Pickering, Hills, and Kassebaum Baker are all on the Board of Trustees for the ICG—International Crisis Group—the leading flak organization pressing the “Save Darfur” and Lord’s Resistance Army (Uganda) narratives.

DARFURISM

The Darfur region of western Sudan has been a hotbed of clandestine activities, gunrunning and indiscriminate violence for decades. The Cold War era saw countless insurgencies launched from the remote deserts of Darfur. Throughout the 1990s factions allied with or against Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, Congo, Libya, Eritrea and the Central African Republic operated from bases in Darfur, and it was a regular landing strip for foreign military transport planes of mysterious origin.

In 1990, Chad’s President Idriss Déby launched a military blitzkrieg from Darfur and overthrew President Hissan Habre; Déby then allied with his own tribe against the Sudan government. Sudanese rebels today have bases in Chad, and Chadian rebels have bases in Darfur, with Khartoum’s backing. When the regime of Ange-Félix Patassé collapsed in the Central African Republic in March 2003, soldiers fled to Darfur with their military equipment. Khartoum supported the West Nile Bank Front, a rebel army operating against Uganda from Eastern Congo, commanded by Taban Amin, the son of the infamous Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, who heads Uganda’s dreaded Internal Security Organization.

France is deeply involved in covert operations and genocide in Africa. Central Africa Republic (C.A.R.), run by General François Bozizé, is a major base of French defense and intelligence operations linked to security regimes in the bloody dictatorships of Republic of Congo, Togo, Cameroon and Gabon, and France backs guerilla groups committing atrocities in Chad, Sudan, DR-Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi. C.A.R. is also a conduit for blood diamonds, and the back-up for France’s nuclear policy, today heavily reliant on uranium exploitation in Niger: C.A.R. reportedly has massive uranium reserves. Like oil-cursed Equatorial Guinea, C.A.R. is also a bloodbath, completely off the international media screen.⁵⁷

Darfur is another epicenter of the modern-day international geopolitical scramble for Africa’s resources. Conflict in Darfur escalated in 2003 in parallel with negotiations “ending” the south Sudan war. The U.S.-backed insurgency by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the guerilla force that fought the northern Khartoum government for 20 years, shifted to Darfur, even as the G.W. Bush government allied with Khartoum in the U.S. led “War on Terrorism.” The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)—one of some twenty-seven rebel factions mushrooming in Darfur—is allied with the SPLA and supported from Uganda. Andrew Natsios, former USAID chief and now U.S. envoy to Sudan, said on October 6, 2007 that the atmosphere between the governments of north and south Sudan “had become poisonous.” This is no surprise given the magnitude of the resource war in Sudan and the involvement of international interests, but the investigation should center on the involvement and activities of USAID officials Andrew Natsios, Roger Winter and Jendayi Frazer.

Roger Winter, USAID chief in Khartoum today, is directly linked to the Rwandan Patriotic Front/Army and U.S. military campaign that destabilized Rwanda and decapitated the leadership of Rwanda and Burundi. USAID’s affiliations with the Department of Defense are now openly advertised with the propaganda peddling AFRICOM—the Pentagon’s new Africa Command. AFRICOM combines U.S. CENTCOM, PACIFICOM and EUCOM operations in Africa; it is nothing new, merely the consolidation and expansion of widespread and ongoing involvement.⁵⁸

Darfur is reported to have the fourth largest copper and third largest uranium deposits in the world.⁵⁹ Darfur produces two-thirds of the world’s best quality gum Arabic—a major ingredient in Coke and Pepsi. Contiguous petroleum reserves are driving warfare from the Red Sea, through Darfur, to the Great Lakes of Central Africa. Private military companies operate alongside petroleum contractors and “humanitarian” agencies. Sudan is China’s fourth biggest supplier of imported oil, and U.S. companies controlling the pipelines in Chad and Uganda seek to displace China through the U.S. military alliance with “frontline” states hostile to Sudan: Uganda, Chad and Ethiopia.

There are claims in the Arab community that Israel provides military training to Darfur rebels from bases in Eritrea, but insiders in Eritrea dispute this. Israel has a deep history of intelligence and military relations with both Eritrea and Ethiopia, and Israel reportedly has a naval and air base on Eritrea’s Dahlak and Fatma islands, from which German-made Dolphin-class submarines patrol the Red Sea with long-range nuclear cruise missiles.⁶⁰ Eritrea reportedly serves as Israel’s outpost for spying on enemies Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Sudan.⁶¹ Africa Research Bulletin in 1998 reported an Israeli base in Eritrea’s Mahal Agar Mountains.⁶² Israel has clearly strengthened ties with the regime in Chad, from which more weapons and troops penetrate Darfur. The refugee camps have become increasingly militarized. There are reports that Israeli and U.S. military and intelligence operate from within refugee camps in Darfur. Israel is all over the Sahara, from Burkina Faso to Ethiopia and Uganda. Israel’s clandestine actions are partly funded by Israeli-American diamond magnates involved in Angola, Sierra Leone, C.A.R. and Congo, especially Dan Gertler (G.W. Bush’s unofficial Ambassador to Congo), Beny Steinmetz, Nir Livnat, Lev Leviev and Maurice Tempelsman.⁶³

African Union (AU) forces in Darfur include Nigerian and Rwandan troops responsible for atrocities in their own countries. Ethiopia has committed 5000 troops for a UN force in Darfur. AU troops receive military-logistic support from NATO, and are widely hated. Early in October 2007, SLA rebels attacked an AU base killing ten troops. In a subsequent editorial sympathetic to rebel factions Smith College English professor Eric Reeves espoused the tired rhetoric of “Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur,” a position counterproductive to any peaceful settlement.⁶⁴ To minimize the damage this rebel attack has done to their credibility Reeves and other “Save Darfur” advocates cast doubt about the rebels’ identities and mischaracterized the SLA attackers as “rogue commanders.” However, there is near unanimous agreement, internationally, that rebels are “out of control,” committing widespread rape and plundering with impunity, just as the SPLA did in South Sudan for over a decade.

Debunking the claims of a “genocide against blacks” or an “Islamic holy-war” against Christians, Darfur’s Arab and black African tribes have intermarried for centuries, and nearly everyone is Muslim. The “Save Darfur” campaign is deeply aligned with Jewish and Christian faith-based organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. These groups have relentlessly campaigned for Western military action, demonizing both Sudan and China, but they have never addressed Western military involvement—backing factions on all sides.

Christian and Jewish involvement in the “Save Darfur” campaign centers on a long-running but deeply manipulative narrative about slavery and genocide in South Sudan. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum furthered the establishment narrative about Darfur in keeping with the genocide theme; no one ever examines the interests behind the Holocaust Memorial Museum (e.g. Bob Dole), it is merely some apolitical institution with the championing of supposed “universal” human rights of all people everywhere as its raison d’etre. The new political and propaganda doctrine that uses “genocide” as a political tool is morally ambiguous, it attacks the crimes of some and passes over the crimes of others. It uses as its universal principle the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its complementary covenants and proclamations. On the one hand, however, this involves genocide inflation, and on the other hand genocide denial. But the USA—with good Christian and Jewish foot soldiers—is always the final arbitrator: global cop, judge, jury, executioner, surgeon and savior all in one.

Christian organizations involved in Sudan for years include Servant’s Heart and Christian Solidarity International. On Servant’s Heart’s “Board of Reference” is British Baroness Caroline Cox, who is also closely affiliated with Christian Solidarity International (CSI)—one of the main Christian allies of the SPLM/A war in southern Sudan. The propaganda system advocates in favor of the “rebels” in Darfur using a handful of techniques developed in their propaganda campaign behind the “rebels” in South Sudan. Rebels are supported partly by never mentioning them, partly by decrying abuses against them, partly by providing sympathetic one-sided accounts of Khartoum government attacks, and partly by defending their excesses if and when—infrequently—the rebel abuses come to light.⁶⁵

Christian Solidarity International (CSI) in 2006 issued press releases claiming that the Lebanese organization Hezbollah “is using Christian villages to shield its military operations in violation of international law.”⁶⁶ These reports appear to be fabrications to begin with and the CSI accusation a projection of their own involvement with the SPLA in South Sudan, where the SPLA for over a decade used the civilian population as human shields, used the Western AID apparatus (Operation Lifeline Sudan) as cover for military support, and used food as a weapon. If Hezbollah did this during the recent U.S.-Israeli invasion they [Hezbollah] certainly learned it by studying SPLA (CSI) tactics in Sudan. Thus we have twisted triple-standards where the establishment propaganda accuses Hezbollah of violating international law, but the SPLM/A—and the “rebel” groups in Darfur—while doing exactly the same thing, are never anything but poor, defenseless Christians under attack in a “genocidal counter-insurgency” run out of Khartoum government.⁶⁵

Who are the rebels in Darfur? Where do they get new uniforms and modern weapons? With the establishment propaganda on Rwanda and the invading Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army from 1990-1994, all abuses were covered up, the government of Juvenal Habyarimana was blamed for everything, and the “rebels”—backed by Washington, partnered with the Pentagon—were never exposed for atrocities and scorched earth attacks. It was the same with the establishment propaganda that covered for the SPLA: their role in committing and provoking atrocities in South Sudan from 1983 to 2003 has been greatly misrepresented and mischaracterized by virtually every popular source cited in the western press. No one has pressed this line more than Dr. Eric Reeves, the Smith College English professor and most widely cited “expert” behind the establishment narrative to “Save Darfur.”⁶⁷

There is growing dissent within the “Save Darfur” movement as more supporters question its motivations and the links to Israel. “Save Darfur” leaders have been replaced after complaints surfaced about expenditures of funds. Many rebel leaders reportedly receive tens of thousands of dollars monthly, and rebels emboldened by the “Save Darfur” movement commit crimes with impunity. There is a growing demand to probe the accounts of “Save Darfur” to find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and bribery—rebel leaders provided with five-star hotel accommodations, prostitutes and sex parties.⁶⁸

The French “humanitarian” charity NGO Zoe’s Ark (L’Arche de Zoé) involved in Chad and Darfur is under investigation by the United Nations, France and Chad for trafficking in black children in the widely under-reported “L’Arche de Zoé affair.” Chadian President Idriss Déby is under attack for alleging “pedophilia” and “organ trafficking” and for arresting seventeen Europeans intercepted at an airport in Chad attempting to depart to France with 103 “Darfur orphans” aged six to ten. The Zoe’s Ark project began fundraising April 28, 2007 to “evacuate 10,000 orphans facing certain death” to France and the United States. Some 300 European’s paid 2000 Euros ($3450) each as “donations” toward logistics costs to receive an orphan. UNHCR determined the children “were living with their families in communities”—they were neither from Darfur nor were they orphans—and their health was not a serious concern.⁶⁹ The NGO was reportedly provided logistical support by the French military, and they had made numerous trips to villages on the Darfur border offering enticements and taking children.⁷⁰ Outraged Chadians on the border with Sudan had already been questioning the motives of scores of foreign aid groups that work with Darfur refugees.⁶⁹ The United Nations and other relief organizations initially denied all knowledge of the Zoe’s Ark NGO but the NGO was registered as an international charity with the UN Mission in Sudan. The Zoe’s Ark website lists 800,000 children “in mortal danger today who must be saved now!”

Humanitarian relief is an industry, with corporate directors, big salaries, career advancement, permanent infrastructure in white economies but mobile, structurally nebulous projects in black countries that entrench structural violence and perpetuate dependence and suffering. Nancy Kassebaum Baker, the outspoken advocate for Congo and Darfur, is also a Director Emeriti for the International Medical Corps (IMC), a “humanitarian” NGO with operations in Darfur, South Sudan, Central Africa Republic, Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Sierre Leone—all the “problem” countries involved in the transcontinental warfare and then some—and 14 countries outside Africa, including the U.S.-occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. Total revenue to IMC in 2005 was $101,727,119.

Amongst the (many) large IMC donors for 2005 and 2006 were numerous Christian and Jewish organizations, charities and missionary affiliates, the Christian right organization euphemistically named Bread for the World (Bob Dole, Donald Payne, David Beckman, Leon Panetta links), and the American Jewish World Service, Pfizer, BP, American Friends Service Committee, Chevron, Trammel Crow (affiliated with Barrick Gold directors), Coca Cola, World Food Program (Bob Dole link), USAID, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of Defense.

“Save Darfur” is today the rallying cry for a broad coalition of special interests. Advocacy groups—from the local Massachusetts Congregation B’Nai Israel chapter to the International Crises Group and USAID—have fueled the conflict through a relentless, but selective, public relations campaign that disingenuously serves a narrow policy agenda. These interests offer no opportunity for corrective analyses, but stubbornly press their agenda, and they are widely criticized for inflaming tensions in Darfur. This is what we might call Darfurism.

The latest Lockheed Martin contract with the United Nations illustrates the latest stage in the transformation of international conflict whereby military-industrial giants are openly engaged, rather than clandestinely, as has been previously the case. This development parallels the rise of Darfurism— a mass movement in the West designed to channel popular sympathy and agitate people to act on a cause they know nothing about, but think they do. Darfurism is a pathological mix of fear, patriotism, social immaturity, opportunism and unconsciousness akin to fascism. Under the current climate of apathy, fear and public opinion, anything goes, and warfare involves humanitarian agencies as active players in the mix. Like the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum they are seen as neutral, described as apolitical, but nothing could be further from the truth.

The United Nations and African Union serve as pseudo-privatized military forces backing a hegemonic, corporate, political and economic agenda. Someone who produces both the danger and, at a price, the shield against it is a racketeer.⁷¹ The future has arrived, and it uses human rights institutions, the label of genocide and accusations of atrocities, and the ever-expanding international AID and charity industry—operating out of pure profit motives—as pivotal elements in the Western portfolio of soft and hard weapons used to further the prerogatives of Empire and clear the land for absolute corporate exploitation. ~

More information:

EXPOSE UGANDA’S GENOCIDE

CEGUN: Campaign to Stop Genocide in Uganda Now

UNIGHT: FOR THE CHILDREN OF UGANDA

FRIENDS OF THE CONGO

ANUAK JUSTICE COUNCIL

1. Maurice Tempelsman chairs the International Advisory Council at the Harvard AIDS Institute (HAI) of the School of Public Health; his involvement in covert actions and interventions flags this program as cover for clandestine biowarfare. HAI partners with the U.S. Military HIV Research Program (USMHRP), a program whose said purpose is to develop vaccines and AIDS prevention for U.S. Military servicemen.
2. Malaria Vaccine.
3. Dulue Mbachu, “Africa’s Unfolding Desert War,” ISN Security Watch, July 11, 2007.
4. “Tourist Killings in Buhoma,” Gorilla Journal, June 18, 1999.
5. See the 1885 map before partition and after.
6. Abu Iskandar as-Sudani, Darfur: The New American French Protectorate, translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr from Al-Hadaf, Damascus, No.1365, May 2005, pp. 22-25.
7. Pratap Chatterjee, “Darfur Diplomacy: Enter the Contractors,” CorpWatch, 21 October 2004.
8. FIFTH COMMITTEE CONCLUDES CONSIDERATION OF FINANCING OF UN MISSION IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, Press Release GA/AB/3499, United Nations, 12/3/2002.
9. Daher International
10. Statistics generated by United Nations bodies and reported by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.
11. See: National Oil Corporation of Kenya and Beicip-Franlab
12. “Lundin Petroleum Signs Production-sharing Contract with Kenya,” Alexander’s Gas & Oil Connections, June 10, 2007.
13. See: Livelihoods & Vulnerabilities Study Gambella Region of Ethiopia, UNICEF, January 2006.
14. See: Michael Maren, The Road To Hell: The Ravaging Affects of Foreign Aid and International Charity, 1996.
15. From the BSP web site: “As biometrics becomes an increasingly important component of physical and logical security systems there is a need for an authoritative and regularly updated reference and data base on virtually all aspects of biometrics and identity assurance.”
16. See e.g. “Uprooted and Forgotten: Impunity and Human Rights Abuses in Northern Uganda,” Human Rights Watch, Vol. 17, No. 12a, September 2005.
17. David M. Rosen, “Child Soldiers, International Humanitarian Law, and the Globalization of Childhood,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 109, Issue 2, 2007, p: 299.
18. See: Keith Harmon Snow, “A People’s History of Congo’s Jean-Pierre Bemba,” Toward Freedom, September 18, 2007; and “Effacer le Tableau: Rapport de la mission internationale de recherche surles crimes commis, en violation du droit international, contre les Pygmées bambuti dans l’est de la République démocratique du Congo,” Minority Rights Group International, ISBN 1904584217, July 2004.
19. Private interviews, eyewitnesses, October 2007.
20. Karen Parker, “Forced Displacement in Northern Uganda,” United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights.
21. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999.
22. See: Tullow, Hardman and Heritage Oil concessions maps
23. keith harmon snow & Georgianne Nienaber, “Are USAID Gorilla Conservation Funds Being Used for Covert Operations in Central Africa?” Z Magazine Online (ZNET) September 19, 2007.
24. Angelo Izama, “How badly did Libya want the Kenya-Uganda oil pipeline deal?” Alexander’s Gas and Oil Connections, Vol. 11, Issue 12, November 24, 2006.
25. Ralph G. Kershaw, “Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda: International Justice According to Washington,” Covert Action Quarterly, No. 74, Fall 2002.
26. Jeevan Vasagar, “Uganda hires PR agency to buff up its image,” The Guardian, May 21, 2005.
27. Private interview, Eastern Congo, March 2007.
28. See: Internal Displacement
29. “Are the Internally Displaced Persons in Rwanda?” ReliefWeb, July 2003.
30. The Rwandan Patriotic Army was renamed the Rwanda Defense Forces (circa 2000?).
31. “Uganda: Kampala-Kigali Oil Pipeline Estimated at $ 193.6 Million,” 16 October 2007, Rwanda News Agency.
32. Laton McCartney, Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story, Simon & Schuster, 1988.
33. SAIC information is taken from their Annual Reports, Proxy Statements, and web site.
34. Wayne Madsen, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa, 1993-1999, Mellen Press, 1999: 358.
35. Keith Harmon Snow and Georgianne Nienaber: “Gorillas ‘Executed’ Stories front for Privatization and Militarization of Congo Parks, Truth of Depopulation Ignored,” ZNET, August 3, 2007; and “King Kong: The Map, The Mad Scientist, and the Mayor.”
36. “Rwanda’s Karisimbi Antenna to Cost USD 2.3 Million,” New Times (Rwanda), 2007.
37. David Barouski, “Laurent Nkundabatware, His Rwandan Allies and the Ex-ANC Mutiny: Chronic Barriers to Lasting Peace in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” ZNET, February 2007.
38. “Rwanda documentary to open US Black gala,” Rwanda Cinema Center, January 2007.
39. Mathew Russel Lee, “At UN, Darfur No-Bid Contract Spun by UK, Chad and Somalia Preemptively Bid Out,” Inner City Press, October 24, 2007.
40. See, e.g., Wayne Madsen, “The CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD) and British intelligence have evidence that then-Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney lost three nuclear weapons in 1991,” Madsen Report, May 2, 2007; Alexander Cockburn, “Broken Arrows and Iran,” Counterpunch, August 3, 2005.
41. Pauline Jelenek, “U.S. special forces in Somalia,” Associated Press, November 1, 2007.
42. Stephanie McCrummen, “U.S. Warship Fires Missiles at Fighters in Somalia,” Washington Post, June 3, 2007.
43. “HMS Bulwark welcomed home after Lebanon operations,” defense news, 15 August 2006.
44. “U.S. Gunships Battle Pirates Who Seized Ships Off Somalia, Mogadishu,” Fox News, October 30, 2007.
45. keith harmon snow, “State Terror Against Indigenous People in Ethiopia: Another Secret War for Oil,” World War Four Report, April 2004.
46. See: keith harmon snow, “Today is the Day of Killing Anuaks,” Genocide Watch and Survivor’s Rights International Report, February 25, 2004.
47. Mark Fineman, “The Oil Factor in Somalia,” Los Angeles Times, January 18, 1993.
48. Xan Rice, “US military ‘used Ethiopian base’ to attack Somali militants,” Guardian Unlimited, February 23, 2007.
49. Livelihoods and Vulnerabilities Study, Gambella Region of Ethiopia, UNICEF report, December 13, 2006.
50. “Burundi: Troops Ready for Deployment in Somalia,” www.allafrica.com, October 5, 2007.
51. “Waiving Prohibition on United States Military Assistance with Respect to Burundi, Guyana, and Liberia, Presidential Determination” No. 2005–08 of November 29, 2004, The White House.
52. “Uganda: American Advisors Being Deployed,” Indian Ocean Newsletter, No. 1209, March 3, 2007.
53. Robert Kaplan, “America’s African Rifles,” Atlantic Monthly, April 2005; Dulue Mbachu, “Africa’s Unfolding Desert War,” ISN Security Watch, July 11, 2007.
54. See e.g.: Mouvement des Nigeriens Pour la Justice; James Finch, “Uranium Mining in Niger at Risk,” The Conservative Voice, July 20, 2007; Sven Ridley-Wordich, “Niger’s Uranium and Oil Sector Threatened by Rebels,” Resource Investor, July 9, 2007; “Uranium prices fall again, conflict in Niger,” National Post, July 9, 2007; “Niger Rebels Pressure Uranium Miners,” The Conservative Voice, July 9, 2007; “Niger rebels attack power plant in uranium area,” Reuters, July 5, 2007.
55. Bill Blankenship, “Ex-senator speaks out: Kassebaum Baker touches on politics of Sudan, Iraq,” The Capital-Journal, October 16, 2006.
56. See: “DARFUR ACTION NOW, Partnership for a Secure America.”
57. Johann Hari, “Inside France’s Secret War,” The Independent, October 5, 2007.
58. AFRICOM
59. Abu Iskandar as-Sudani, “Darfur: The New American French Protectorate,” translated by Muhammad Abu Nasr from Al-Hadaf, Damascus, No.1365, May 2005, pp. 22-25 ; see also : keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in Somalia? The New, Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa,” Global Research, February 2007.
60. See: “Close intelligence relations between Israel and Ethiopia, Eritrea
,” June 26, 1998, Arabicnews.com; “Israel to acquire two more German Submarines,” IMRA Newsletter, December 22, 2004.; Muhammed Salahuddin, “How Israel Casts Its Dark Shadow Over Horn of Africa,” Arab News, August 31, 2006.
61. Muhammed Salahuddin, “How Israel Casts Its Dark Shadow Over Horn of Africa,” Arab News, August 31, 2006.
62. Africa Research Bulletin, Vol. 35, Issue 6, p. 13131-13166, June 1-30, 1998.
63. keith harmon snow and Rick Hines, “Blood Diamond: Doublethink and Deception Over Those Worthless Little Rocks of Desire,” Z Magazine, June & July 2007.
64. Eric Reeves, “Darfur’s Bitter Ironies,” Guardian Online, October 4, 2007.
65. See: keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in Somalia? The New, Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa,” Global Research, February 2007 and revised for allthingspass, April 2007.
66. “Hezbollah is Using Christian Villages to Shield its Military Operations in Violation of International Law,” Christian Solidarity International, 1 August 2006.
67. See keith harmon snow, “Oil in Darfur? Covert Ops in Somalia? The New Old Humanitarian Warfare in Africa” and, e.g. “SPLA Offensive Overwhelms Muslim Forces,” excerpted from Frontline Fellowship News, 197, Edition 2.
68. Private communication, October 2007. See also, e.g.: “Gaddafi, the Peacemaker in Chad and Darfur.”
69. Stephanie Hancock, “Most Chad Case Children Not Orphans,” Reuters, November 1, 2007.
70. “CHAD: French NGO Accused of Trafficking Children,” IRIN News, October 26, 2007; “Chad: Government Accused of Hypocrisy in Zoe’s Ark Affair,” IRIN News, November 8, 2007; Guillemette Faure, “Trafic d’enfants ou pieds nickelés de l’humanitaire?,” October 26, 2007, Anne Else, “Untangling the Zoe’s Ark Affair,” Anne Else’s Letter from Elsewhere, November 6, 2007.
71. Charles Tilly, “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime,” In Bringing the State Back In, Peter Evans et al.

The Darfur region of western Sudan has been a hotbed of clandestine activities, gunrunning and indiscriminate violence for decades.

“The humanitarian tragedy in Darfur revolves around natural resources… Given current realities, no intervention in Darfur will proceed, and if it did it would fail.”

So opined the authors of the September 2006 OPED “Keeping Peacekeepers out of Darfur” [GN1](DHG, 9/15/06). Now, over a year later, the situation in Sudan is grimmer than ever, the Darfur conflict remains widely mischaracterized, and many of the predictions of that OPED have come true. Meanwhile, the “Save Darfur” advocates pressing military intervention in Darfur as a “humanitarian” gesture have escalated pressure in the face of mounting failures, including allegations that millions of “Save Darfur” dollars fundraised on a sympathy for victims platform have been misappropriated.

The Darfur region of western Sudan has been a hotbed of clandestine activities, gunrunning and indiscriminate violence for decades. The Cold War era saw countless insurgencies launched from the remote deserts of Darfur. Throughout the 1990s, factions allied with or against Chad, Uganda, Ethiopia, Congo, Libya, Eritrea and the Central African Republic operated from bases in Darfur, and it was a regular landing strip for foreign military transport planes of mysterious origin. In 1990, Chad’s Idriss Deby launched a military blitzkrieg from Darfur and overthrew President Hissan Habre; Deby then allied with his own ethnic group against the Sudan government. Sudanese rebels today have bases in Chad, and Chadian rebels have bases in Darfur, with Khartoum’s backing.[GN2] When the regime of Ange-Félix Patassé collapsed in the Central African Republic in March 2003, soldiers fled to Darfur with their military equipment. Khartoum supported the West Nile Bank Front, a rebel army operating against Uganda from Eastern Congo, commanded by Taban Amin, the son of the infamous Ugandan dictator, Idi Amin, who heads Uganda’s dreaded Internal Security Organization. Darfur is the epicenter of a modern-day international geopolitical scramble for Africa’s resources.

Conflict in Darfur escalated in 2003 after in parallel with negotiations “ending” the south Sudan war. The U.S.-backed insurgency by the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), the guerrilla force that fought the northern Khartoum government for 20 years, shifted to Darfur, even as the G.W. Bush government allied with Khartoum in the U.S. led “war on terror.” The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)—one of some 27 rebel factions mushrooming in Darfur—is allied with the SPLA and supported from Uganda. Andrew Natsios, former USAID chief and now US envoy to Sudan, said on October 6, 2007 that the atmosphere between the governments of north and south Sudan “had become poisonous.” This is no surprise given the magnitude of the resource war in Sudan and the involvement of international interests.

Darfur is reported to have the fourth largest copper and third largest uranium deposits in the world. Darfur produces two-thirds of the world’s best quality gum Arabic—a major ingredient in Coke and Pepsi. Contiguous petroleum reserves are driving warfare from the Red Sea, through Darfur, to the Great Lakes of Central Africa. Private military companies operate alongside petroleum contractors and “humanitarian” agencies. Sudan is China’s fourth biggest supplier of imported oil, and U.S. companies controlling the pipelines in Chad and Uganda seek to displace China through the US military alliance with “frontline” states hostile to Sudan: Uganda, Chad and Ethiopia.

Israel reportedly provides military training to Darfur rebels from bases in Eritrea, and has strengthened ties with the regime in Chad, from which more weapons and troops penetrate Darfur. The refugee camps have become increasingly militarized. There are reports that Israeli military intelligence operates from within the camps, as does U.S intelligence. Eritrea is about to explode into yet another war with Ethiopia.

African Union (AU) forces in Darfur include Nigerian and Rwandan troops responsible for atrocities in their own countries. While committing 5000 troops for a UN force in Darfur, Ethiopia is perpetrating genocidal atrocities in Somalia, and against Ethiopians in the Ogaden, Oromo and Anuak regions. Uganda has 2000 U.S.-trained troops in Somalia, also committing massive atrocities, and the genocide against the Acholi people in northern Uganda proceeds out of sight. Ethiopia is the largest recipient of U.S. “Aid” in Africa, with Rwanda and Uganda close on its heals. France is deeply committed to the Anglo-American strategy, which will benefit Total Oil Corp.

AU troops receive military-logistic support from NATO, and are widely hated. Early in October 2007, SLA rebels attacked an AU base killing ten troops. In a subsequent editorial sympathetic to rebel factions (“Darfur’s Bitter Ironies,” Guardian Online, 10/4/07), Smith College English professor Eric Reeves espoused the tired rhetoric of “Khartoum’s genocidal counter-insurgency war in Darfur,” a position counterproductive to any peaceful settlement. To minimize the damage this rebel attack has done to their credibility, Reeves and other “Save Darfur” advocates cast doubt about the rebels’ identities and mischaracterized the SLA attackers as “rogue commanders.” However, there is near unanimous agreement, internationally, that rebels are “out of control,” committing widespread rape and plundering with impunity, just as the SPLA did in South Sudan for over a decade.

Debunking the claims of a “genocide against blacks” or an “Islamic holy-war” against Christians, Darfur’s Arab and black African ethnic groups have intermarried for centuries, and nearly everyone is Muslim. The “Save Darfur” campaign is deeply aligned with Jewish and Christian faith-based organizations in the United States, Canada, Europe and Israel. These groups have relentlessly campaigned for Western military action, demonizing both Sudan and China, but they have never addressed Western military involvement—backing factions on all sides. By mobilizing constituencies sympathetic to the “genocide” label and the cries of “never again” they do a grave disservice to the cause of human rights.

There is growing dissent within the “Save Darfur” movement as more supporters question its motivations and the Jewish-Israeli link. “Save Darfur” leaders have been replaced after complaints surfaced about expenditures of funds. Many rebel leaders reportedly receive tens of thousands of dollars monthly, and rebels emboldened by the “Save Darfur” movement commit crimes with impunity. There is a growing demand to probe the accounts of “Save Darfur” to find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and bribery—rebel leaders provided with five-star hotel accommodations, prostitutes and sex parties.

“Save Darfur” is today the rallying cry for a broad coalition of special interests. Advocacy groups—from the local Massachusetts Congregation B’Nai Israel chapter to the International Crises Group and USAID—have fueled the conflict through a relentless, but selective, public relations campaign that disingenuously serves a narrow policy agenda. These interests offer no opportunity for corrective analyses, but stubbornly press their agenda, and they are widely criticized for inflaming tensions in Darfur. Rhetoric, aggression and propaganda do not make a strong foreign policy, and the African people suffering from this brutal international conflict involving China, Saudi Arabia, France, Britain, Canada, the United States and Israel cannot eat good intentions foolishly delivered under the banners of “humanitarian aid” and a poorly cloaked militarism.

The West is desperate to deploy a “robust peacekeeping” mission in Darfur, to press the Western agenda, but United Nations forces will only deepen the chaos. The UN forces will cost billions of dollars and will achieve nothing positive. Indeed, the results will be disastrous, creating another Iraq and Afghanistan—only increasing the chaos and devastation already apparent. The United States is hated for this kind of aggression and posturing, and the U.S. economy will continue to suffer.

This article was first published at Black Agenda Report.

Why is mass death the cause of indignation and confrontation in Sudan, but exponentially more massive carnage in Congo unworthy of mention? The answer is simple: in Sudan, the US has a geopolitical nemesis to confront: Arabs, and their Chinese business partners. In the Congo, it is US allies and European and American corporate interests that benefit from the slaughter. Therefore, despite five million skeletons lying in the ground, there is no call to arms from the American government. It is they who set the genocidal Congolese machine in motion.

Active US Passivity

In 1994, Rwanda was on the brink. The Hutu majority, which had for a century been oppressed by Tutsi surrogates for European colonialists, feared that another massacre of their kin was imminent. There had been many massacres of Hutus, before, in Rwanda and neighboring Burundi, also under minority Tutsi control. Pent-up hysteria exploded in an orgy of violence that claimed the lives of as many as 800,000 Tutsis and Hutus that did not support the genocide.

The US did nothing to interfere, because they had two actors in the game. Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni was now the Americans’ guy in central Africa. Tutsi Rwandan exiles, headed by Paul Kagame, were an integral part of Museveni’s army. As the genocide began, Kagame’s forces launched an offensive from Uganda into Rwanda. It did not halt the massacre of Tutsis, but succeeded in driving the disorganized Hutus into neighboring Congo. The Americans now had another player in the African game: the new head of the Rwandan Tutsi-dominated state, Paul Kagame. His forces then invaded eastern Congo, chasing the fleeing Hutus.

The eastern Congo was up for grabs, and everybody grabbed some.

All hell broke loose. President Mobutu Sese Seko, America’s man in the Congo, then called Zaire, was terminally ill. He fled and died in exile in 1997. The eastern Congo was now up for grabs, and everybody grabbed some. Eastern Congo is one of the most minerally rich places on Earth, an extractors’ paradise. According to the CIA’s “Factbook,” the DRC abounds with “cobalt, copper, niobium, tantalum, petroleum, industrial and gem diamonds, gold, silver, zinc, manganese, tin, uranium, coal, hydropower, timber.” All of these resources are exploited by European and American corporations that maintain their own mercenary armies to guard the extraction fields. For generations they have run their patches of Congolese land like governments, with the support of France, Belgium, the United States and other powers. The so-called civil war effectively gave them full autonomy in the wake of Mobutu’s corrupt demise, as the power of the central government in Kinshasa, crumbled. Mass carnage raged around them, but did not interrupt the extraction process.

Geopolitical Crimes

In the thirteen years since Rwandan Tutsi Paul Kagame’s forces — surrogates for the U.S. puppet president of Uganda, Yoweri Museveni — invaded the eastern Congo, possibly five million people have died. President Bill Clinton, the man who stood aside while the Rwandan genocide took place, then presided over a far bigger mass murder in Congo. He has apologized for only one. In a visit to Kigali, capital of Rwanda, Clinton said:

“We come here today partly in recognition of the fact that we in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred.”

But what occurred is not over. The bloodshed spread rapidly to eastern Congo, unleashed by U.S. surrogate forces, and continues to this day. Paul Kagame, the Rwandan president, has served US imperial ambitions well. He supported the US invasion of Iraq, and continues to destabilize Congo with his forces in the eastern region. Multinational corporations, of course, operate their own airstrips and communications networks. Their patches of Congo proceed like business as usual, while the death toll mounts by millions among the people, who are overrun by militias of various ethnicities and Kagame’s Rwandan army.

A quarter million people have died in Darfur, compared to five million in Congo.

The Congolese genocide is not part of the American political discussion. When Africa is mentioned at all, it is about Darfur. A quarter million people have died there, compared to five million in Congo. Both holocausts are crimes against humanity, but only the smaller one, Darfur, is a fit subject for inclusion in the US political debate. During the June 3 CNN Democratic debate, moderator Wolf Blitzer demanded that the candidates “raise their hands” if they supported the imposition of a no-fly zone in Darfur — an act of war against the government in Khartoum according to international law. Only Rep. Dennis Kucinich and former Senator Mike Gravel declined to endorse the violation of Sudanese sovereignty. In the following Republican debate, the consensus was almost unanimous, except for Rep. Ron Paul: impose a no-fly regime over the western Sudan.

Imperial Chess Game

The Congressional Black Caucus follows the same script as Wolf Blitzer. Members have lobbied and demonstrated against the Sudanese regime, to the applause of the corporate press. But they have never said a word, as a body, about the hellacious carnage in Congo. It is a taboo subject, too close to “vital American interests.” But the Sudanese conflict is fair game, and so the Black Caucus joins in the general mob attack. They make common cause with imperial ambitions in the Horn of Africa, while ignoring the murder of millions in central Africa.

“The Black Caucus makes common cause with imperial ambitions in the Horn of Africa.”

The preferred narrative of Darfur fits nicely with that of the Israeli lobby in the United States. Although all the antagonists are Black Africans and Muslims, the aggressors are classified as “Arabs.” A regional inter-African, inter-Muslim conflict is made to appear as part of the “clash of civilizations” — the new Cold War. The proof is that the Chinese are partners with the Khartoum regime, having engaged in oil contracts. The evil Chinese menace threatens American interests, and it follows that any country that deals with the Chinese is involved in an anti-American conspiracy. If they are Arabs (although black as my shoe), then the narrative is complete. Arabs have collaborated with Chinese to kill Africans just as black as themselves. Let’s declare war on them, beginning with a no-fly zone that violates their sovereignty.

The scenario is the same as Iraq: take control of their skies and the land beneath it, and bomb at will. Remove any semblance of government authority, under the guise of ending genocide. Extend the reach of the US military’s paws in the Sahel region. The African Union has tried mightily to put an effective peace-keeping force on the ground in Darfur, but the United States and the Europeans refused to supply the logistical forces that are necessary; the C-130s to reinforce and supply the African troops. The Americans and Europeans held out until the African contingent was at the breaking point, and then forced through the UN Security Council a plan to place 26,000 US and European-led soldiers on the ground. Another piece of Africa will pass into foreign hands.

Darfur has been made into a stage-set of anti-Arab conflict, which perfectly suits the pro-Israel lobby in the US. Congo, where far more people have died, remains a gargantuan killing field, uncovered by the corporate media and ignored by the Congressional Black Caucus and the array of Democratic presidential candidates. Genocide depends on who is doing the killing, apparently.

A crowd of a few thousand gathered at Downing Street for Global Day for Darfur, on April 29. They were largely Sudanese, mostly from Darfur. They gathered in London’s hotspot for protests with a seemingly decisive and uncompromising demand: intervention. They called on Britain — as tens of thousands rallying simultaneously in 36 cities called on their respective governments and the international community — to intervene to end the effective ‘genocide’ in Sudan’s Eastern province. Though a UN investigative team denied that the killings there were being carried out with genocidal intent, the fact is, an uncountable number of people are unnecessarily dying, mostly due to starvation and disease, but also murdered with impunity. Two million live in refugee camps, still targeted mostly by Janjaweed militias but also rebel fighters. Even those who cross into Chad — 200,000 refugees are now living along the 600 kilometer stretch that separates Sudan from its neighbor to the West — are not safe. The ethnic profile that makes Darfur a testing place for social and national cohesion, also exists in eastern Chad, thus similar feuds are carried out across the border.

The Darfur crisis is not that of black and white, Arabs and Africans. This is nonsense. They are all Africans. They are all Muslims, almost to the last one. Reductions and oversimplification might be useful to the media and short-sighted or self-serving politicians and governments, but deceptive and simply inaccurate. Even the two main rebel groups — The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Justice and Equality Movement (Jem) — are now fighting one another following the mid 2006 Abuja agreement. Chad is arming Sudan’s rebels and Sudan is doing the same.

But considering that the victims and the aggressors are all Muslim, what have Muslim countries and organizations done to bring the crisis to a halt? As the United States is keenly interested in hyping the tragedy and exploiting it for its own purposes, Muslim institutions in the West appear
uninterested in the whole affair, merely paying lip service to fend off accusations. At least this is how I felt when I caught up with Dr. Daud Abdullah, the Deputy Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the largest umbrella Muslim group — representing over 400 Muslim organizations in the country.

Abdullah spoke at the Darfur rally with unequaled passion, a quality known of this man, a Jamaican-British Muslim who has obtained his Ph.D. in modern Sudanese history from the University of Khartoum. He lived in the war torn country for seven years. He seemed neither apologetic nor bashful to lay the blame where it deserves to be laid; but he was clearly fearful of misguided military adventures like those of the United States in the Middle East.

“Muslims learned bitter lessons from the Kuwait episode when foreigners invaded Muslim lands,” he told me, proposing “an internal political settlement within Sudan using African and Muslim resources.” When I suggested to Abdullah that such a proposal is useless considering its
repeated failures, and considering the urgency of the situation in Sudan, he responded: “failure of the part of Muslims on more than one occasion shouldn’t negate the notion that Muslims must not to try to resolve the situation internally and present their own alternatives.”

Dr. Abdullah knows more than anyone else I know how Sudan “is prone to fragmentation.” He said the country “was put together in the 19th century (in a political concoction) that has left it in constant struggle and civil war. The country is hardly in need for further fragmentation.”

“This conflict will be resolved at the negotiation table,” according to Abduallah, who is also one of the most well known Muslim rights advocates in the country, if not in all of Europe. “There can be no military solution. Muslim countries, civil societies and other parties must strive to bring
conflicting parties to talk on the basis of sharing wealth and creating equality and ending the marginalization that has defined Darfur for generations.”

Rights groups however, suggest that the intensity of the violence has increased since the peace agreement signed last year between the government and the rebels. The rebels’ split lead to an internal clash and the killings are no longer defined according to the simplified media line: Janjaweeds vs. Africans.

Dr. Abdullah defended the MCB against my suggestion that some Muslim groups seem little interested in direct involvement, and that Darfur has been dropped out of their political sphere for it simply involves no other party other than Muslims. “The MCB has been involved in efforts to support political settlement in Sudan. We are in direct contact with Khartoum and
are exploring ways to ensure that the central government honors its responsibilities toward the people of that region.” He spoke of “some progress” on that front, and insisted that the powerful Muslim organization fully supports the Abuja Agreement. According to Abdullah, MCB continues to exert all efforts to help bring an end to the conflict.

In such conflicts, when regional control, political interests and economic booty are all at stake, human lives, especially those of these least importance – peasants, nomads and defenseless innocents with little clout — become a pawn in the hands of those who wish for conflict to perpetuate, so long as there is a good reason for its continuation. As I left the Darfur rally, the echo of an angry speaker, demanding intervention and justice and all the rest followed me a long distance from the crowd. My mind was totally consumed with the most expressive hourglass of blood. It was still streaming as people continue to die.