Bush, Clinton in the web
Behind the assassination of Kabila
By Deirdre
Griswold and
Johnnie Stevens
The failure of both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to
express even the most perfunctory regret over the assassination
of Congo President Laurent Désiré Kabila betrays
how implicated Washington is in this latest outrage against the
most important country in central Africa.
Washington's silence is even more glaring considering that
its foreign policy experts are well aware that the African
people view the secret intelligence agencies of the U.S.
government, which work closely with corporations seeking vast
fortunes in the region, as the probable authors of this
crime.
George Bush Sr., father of the president, even had an
intimate connection with one of these plundering
corporations.
But this is not mentioned in the commercial media, which, as
usual, go even further than indifference to insult the fallen
head of state, while speculating on the breakup of the
Congo.
What they carefully omit in their reporting is the deadly
record of U.S. interventions in the Congo, beginning with
President Dwight D. Eisenhower's order at a meeting of the
National Security Council on Aug. 18, 1960, to assassinate
Patrice Lumumba. Lumumba was the young and inspiring
independence leader who was briefly the Congo's first
president. The 40th anniversary of his assassination, Jan. 17
of this year, was the day after Kabila was shot.
The U.S. media are today blaming Kabila for failing to bring
peace to the Congo. This is a monstrous charge, since
Washington is largely responsible for the war that has crushed
the Congolese people's hopes for a better life since the
overthrow of dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. The Congo government
has been trying to expel Rwandan and Ugandan troops that
invaded eastern Congo in August 1998. The U.S. has secretly
supported them and their occupation of this area of fabulous
mineral wealth.
The Congo's allies in this war are Zimbabwe, Angola and
Namibia--all countries that had to fight racist colonial
regimes to win their independence.
The invaders, on the other hand, have been supplied with
high-tech weaponry and communications and transportation
equipment by their imperialist backers. There is evidence of
military training and coordination from the Pentagon and the
involvement of mercenary companies, including MPRI of the U.S.,
Executive Outcome of South Africa, and Sandline of Britain.
Kabila resisted 'globalization'
What U.S. corporations wanted from Kabila, and what he
refused to give, was outright control over an area that
contains some of the world's most important deposits of gold,
diamonds, cobalt, manganese, uranium, copper, zinc, germanium,
silver, lead, iron and tungsten.
It has been Washington's theme song for the last decade that
oppressed countries must join the "global economy"--meaning
sell off state-owned enterprises to imperialist investors, open
their domestic markets and devalue their currencies, thus
further lowering the standard of living.
Even Mobutu tried to resist this and hold on to state
control over the mines--one of the reasons the U.S. decided to
dump him after having propped him up for almost 35 years.
Washington helped a coalition force headed by Kabila but based
on Rwandan and Ugandan military forces to topple Mobutu in
1997.
But once Kabila became president, he surprised his former
allies by refusing to be a puppet and trying to rally the
Congolese people to unite and defend their country's
sovereignty.
Kabila also retracted a number of mining contracts signed
with U.S. and European corporations during the period of the
alliance with Rwanda and Uganda. And he refused to pay back the
huge debt to the International Monetary Fund and World Bank
incurred by the Mobutu regime. For this, it seemed, they never
forgave him.
A most interesting essay on "The geopolitical stakes of the
international mining companies in the Democratic Republic of
Congo" by mining civil engineer Pierre Baracyetse can be
found
on the Web at www.africa2000.com/
UGANDA/mineralseng.html.
It explains in detail the high stakes involved for foreign
capital.
Billions of dollars at stake
American Mineral Fields (AMFI), a consortium based
originally in Hope, Ark.--yes, Bill Clinton's hometown--is a
big player in exploiting Congo's mineral wealth. In 1997, just
a month before Mobutu fell, it signed contracts with the
Kabila-Rwanda-Uganda alliance forces for almost a billion
dollars investment in copper, cobalt and zinc mines and
processing plants in Kolwezi and Kipushi.
The industrial enterprises that set up AMFI, according to
Baracyetse, "are interested in the contract for the
construction of the orbital platform around the world that is
destined to replace the Russian station MIR."
This project is part of the $60-billion so-called National
Missile Defense system that George W. Bush, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and
Vice President Richard Cheney are pushing so vigorously.
Building the space station will require many of the rare metals
found in eastern Congo.
Another big player in the eastern Congo is Barrick Gold
Corp., headquartered in Canada. It is the world's
second-largest gold producer after Anglo-American of South
Africa.
This company was able in 1996 to get the Mobutu regime's
Gold Office of Kilomoto, a government monopoly, to transfer
mining rights over almost all its 82,000 square kilometers of
land to Barrick. The land is estimated to have 100 tons of gold
in reserve.
George Bush Sr. sat on the board of directors of Barrick,
according to Baracyetse.
The Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, signed into law by
President Clinton last May 18, brought the full power of the
U.S. government behind expanding corporate domination in
Africa. The biggest companies, including Texaco, Mobil, Amoco,
Occidental Petroleum, Chevron, General Electric, Enron and
Caterpillar spent some $200 million lobbying for this
legislation.
Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Susan Rice described
Africa as "a huge market insufficiently exploited of 700
million people" in calling for passage of the act. The vision
being pushed by both Democrats and Republicans is that only
U.S. intervention can bring development and prosperity to
Africa.
But politically conscious Africans are calling it the
"Recolonization of Africa" act, and warn that it will only
increase the plunder of this rich continent by corporate
pirates.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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