From: Judy Miriga
Thanks Ali Rashid,
This underworld is mind boggling. It is unacceptable and things cannot go on like this; but they must be brought to a close. The world is falling apart if nothing will be done to bring this matter to an end……It is bad and innocent lives and blood are crying out aloud………We will not just sit and watch…….God will not be happy.
This matter of Private Merceneries if the mother of all problems we have in the world; it is the reason for economic crisis and Offshoring where Traders demand Free Trading and are fighting to eliminate existance of Governments and so, it is the reason why Governments finances goes to illegally organized groups fueling Terrorists and Pirates that are terrorizing the whole world……..
We demand for an Extremely urgent and thorough investigation to this matter and we ask the UN and the the ICC Hague not to waste any more time but act urgently to embark and bring these Organizers and Engineers of Terror and the illegal Terrorist invasions before Legal Justice so acts of Dictatorships with excessive fear from such organized gangs would come to a close.
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
– – – – – – – – – –
— On Sat, 11/24/12, Ali Rashid wrote:
From: Ali Rashid
Subject: ###Urgent: 45,000 IDPs, near Goma November 21, 2012.
Date: Saturday, November 24, 2012, 4:10 PM
AHASANTE KWAKUTUJULISHA
Ni hii habari hapa ambayo inatatiza.
The UPDF of course denied Otunnu’s claims. But the New York Times report also accused General Saleh and other top Ugandan army officers of using their ties to paramilitaries to plunder Congolese diamonds, gold and timber. But what exactly is Saracen International? Who really owns it? Our efforts to get a comment from Saracen International were futile by press time.
So for the time being, it may be fair to say that no one really knows for sure what Saracen International is, and who owns it. What one can say however is that Saracen International is definitely a murky trade name that is shared by a number of private security companies across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America.
A few have however been linked to the infamous South African mercenary firm called Executive Outcomes; the same company that allegedly tried to send mercenaries to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea in order to tap into the country’s oil and mineral wealth.
Saracen International has also been linked to a certain Erik Prince; the man whose company Blackwater is allegedly financing a “Counter-Piracy” mercenary squad in Somalia . Both the New York TimesandAssociated Press have carried similar allegations against Saracen International on the strength of“confidential” reports leaked from the African Union.
From: Judy Miriga
Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2012 10:02 PM
Subject: ###Urgent: 45,000 IDPs, near Goma November 21, 2012.
Ali Rashid,
Museveni has a case to answer at the ICC Hague……and with all these evidence
we must begin to push forward the cases of Crimes, Violation and Abuse against
Human Rights……..It is time the ICC Hague to catch up with Museven, Kagame and Kabila. Meles is dead but we know Meles and Somali Salim Saleh with Team including Kibaki, Moi with Team must follow suit.
Museveni is a bully, he took Migingo by force and killed many Luo fishermen and confiscated their fishing tools. He brought his brother Saleh Somali Pirates to take and control Migingo, Lake Victoria and the sorrounding lakes; ready to enleash lethal attack to wipe out Luo Nyanza with his Somali Al-Shabaab joined with the Mungiki which is why Kibaki has to do some explaining at the ICC Hague why the 2007/8 he used Museveni to target and wipe out the Luos from Nyanza….it is what is under conspiracy why Al-Shabaab is in the offensive to create instability by killing people from Garrisa, Tana River, Mombasa, Eastleigh in Nairobi and Kisumu.
ICC Must begin to engage these investigations while they are behind bars…..and this cannot wait any longer. Evidence are crystal clear and there is no excuse to wait for another day…….
Museveni with the Somali Brother Salim Saleh with Kagame, engaged in extreme commando with Kibaki to destroy stability of East Africa and through COMESA took pride in distabilizing the region with utter invasion of Lake Victoria with the surroundings, killed and destroyed livelihood and survival of many. They forced people to a forceful re-location because they planned an illegal OCCUPATION. This is unaccepted. The Law must take precedence and ICC Hague must take the lead to create favorable and stable habitation of people in the region. Legal Justice is the way to peace in the Greater Region of COMESA and this cannot wait.
How could the Rebel training go on in Congo and Kibaki, Kagame, Kabila and Museveni are quite pretending to be dumb. They must pay for the lives lost, human livelihood and survival that are destroyed. They must pay for the forceful Migration of of Victims of Circumstances. They must pay for causing insecurity because of illegal occupation there.
No one is above the law………!!!
Connect the dots people and everybody to push for ICC Hague to take up this matter with the urgency it deserve……..!!!
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
Check Out Foot-Note How America’s Dollar & Wealth have wings
Through Foundations and NGOs……Draining the Country dry….
— On Sat, 11/24/12, Ali Rashid wrote:
From: Ali Rashid
Subject: ###Urgent: 45,000 IDPs, near Goma November 21, 2012.
Date: Saturday, November 24, 2012, 4:10 PM
AHASANTE KWAKUTUJULISHA
Ni hii habari hapa ambayo inatatiza.
The UPDF of course denied Otunnu’s claims. But the New York Times report also accused General Saleh and other top Ugandan army officers of using their ties to paramilitaries to plunder Congolese diamonds, gold and timber. But what exactly is Saracen International? Who really owns it? Our efforts to get a comment from Saracen International were futile by press time.
So for the time being, it may be fair to say that no one really knows for sure what Saracen International is, and who owns it. What one can say however is that Saracen International is definitely a murky trade name that is shared by a number of private security companies across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America.
A few have however been linked to the infamous South African mercenary firm called Executive Outcomes; the same company that allegedly tried to send mercenaries to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea in order to tap into the country’s oil and mineral wealth.
Saracen International has also been linked to a certain Erik Prince; the man whose company Blackwater is allegedly financing a “Counter-Piracy” mercenary squad in Somalia . Both the New York TimesandAssociated Press have carried similar allegations against Saracen International on the strength of“confidential” reports leaked from the African Union.
Blackwater Founder Moves to Abu Dhabi, Records Say
By JAMES RISEN
Published: August 17, 2010
WASHINGTON — Erik Prince, whose company, Blackwater Worldwide, is for sale and whose former top managers are facing criminal charges, has left the United States and moved to Abu Dhabi, according to court documents.
Times Topic:Blackwater Worldwide
Mr. Prince, a former member of the Navy Seals and an heir to a Michigan auto parts fortune, left the country after a series of civil lawsuits, criminal charges and Congressional investigations singled out Blackwater or its former executives and other personnel. His company, now called Xe Services, has collected hundreds of millions of dollars from the United States government since 2001.
Current and former colleagues said Mr. Prince hoped to focus on security work from governments in Africa and the Middle East. They also said he was bitter about the legal scrutiny and negative publicity his company had received.
“He needs a break from America,” said one colleague, speaking only on the condition of anonymity about Mr. Prince’s long-rumored move.
Mr. Prince does not face any criminal charges, but five former top company executives have been indicted on federal weapons, conspiracy and obstruction charges. Two guards who worked for a Blackwater-affiliated company face murder charges from a 2009 shooting in Afghanistan, and the Justice Department is trying to revive its prosecution of five former Blackwater guards accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians in 2007.
Over the past several years, Congress has also conducted a series of investigations of Blackwater’s activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, including an inquiry by the House Intelligence Committee into the company’s involvement in a proposed Central Intelligence Agency assassination program.
Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Mr. Prince, declined to comment about Mr. Prince’s move. Richard L. Beizer, a Washington lawyer representing Mr. Prince in a civil case, did not respond to requests for comment.
In documents filed last week in a civil lawsuit brought by former Blackwater employees accusing Mr. Prince of defrauding the government, Mr. Prince sought to avoid giving a deposition by stating that he had moved to Abu Dhabi in time for his children to enter school there Aug. 15. In the documents filed in federal court in Virginia, Mr. Prince’s lawyers describe Abu Dhabi as Mr. Prince’s place of residence. His deposition is now scheduled to take place there next week, lawyers involved in the case said.
Mr. Prince made a name for himself during the height of the war in Iraq, when Blackwater became the most recognizable brand name in the booming field of private security contracting. The company, which Mr. Prince founded in 1997, expanded rapidly, winning a series of contracts with the State Department, the C.I.A. and the Defense Department.
But Blackwater personnel in Iraq soon gained a reputation for cowboy tactics and the use of excessive force while guarding convoys of United States diplomats, leading to complaints from Iraqis and friction with the United States military.
Blackwater’s biggest public crisis came in September 2007, when its guards on a convoy in Nisour Square in Baghdad opened fire with machine guns, grenade launchers and other weapons, killing 17 Iraqi civilians. Five guards were indicted in the United States on manslaughter charges, but the charges were dismissed late last year by a federal judge. The Justice Department is appealing that ruling.
The Nisour Square killings ultimately led the State Department to drop Blackwater from its diplomatic security contract in Iraq. But the Justice Department has been investigating whether Blackwater sought to bribe Iraqi government officials to allow the firm to operate in the country after the Nisour Square killings.
In 2009, with scrutiny of Blackwater’s activities intensifying, Mr. Prince changed the company’s name and overhauled the management. He sold the company’s aviation arm early this year, and finally placed the whole company, including its huge headquarters and training complex in Moyock, N.C., up for sale in June.
COMMENTS:
[–]Ra__ 0 points1 point2 points 3 years ago
sorry, this has been archived and can no longer be voted on Plenty of Blackwater and Halliburton sins have been catalogued before this. They just smile and walk away with impunity. The system has failed us.
Blackwater founder Erik Prince enters video game business
MODERN WARFARE
September 12, 2011|By John Gaudiosi, Special to CNN
“Blackwater” was developed by Zombie Studios and overseen by former Navy SEAL amd Blackwater founder Erik Prince.
More and more, today’s video game business is driven by huge military shooters like Activision’s “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3” and Electronic Arts’ “Battlefield 3.”
Now, Erik Prince, the founder of a controversial, real-world military group, is stepping into the virtual war zone with a new first-person shooter, “Blackwater.”
Designed exclusively for Microsoft’s Kinect for Xbox 360, “Blackwater” was developed by Zombie Studios and overseen by Prince, a former Navy SEAL.
The shooter is set in a fictional North African town overrun by warlords and opposing militia forces. Players enter the fray as team members of Blackwater, the mercenaries-for-hire company that Prince founded in 1997
Business > Companies > Blackwater Worldwide
Blackwater Worldwide
Ahmad al-Rubaye/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Updated: April 25, 2011
Founded in 1998 by former Navy Seals, Blackwater Worldwide says it has trained tens of thousands of security personnel to work in hot spots around the world.
The company, now called Xe Services, was once the United States’ go-to contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan. It has been under intense scrutiny since 2007, when Blackwater guards were accused of killing 17 civilians in Nisour Square in Baghdad.
The company and its executives and personnel have faced civil lawsuits, criminal charges and Congressional investigations surrounding accusations of murder and bribery. In April 2010, federal prosecutors announced weapons charges against five former senior Blackwater executives, including its former president, Erik D. Prince.
Nearly four years after the federal government began a string of investigations and criminal prosecutions against company personnel, some of the cases have fallen apart, burdened by legal obstacles including the difficulties of obtaining evidence in war zones, of gaining proper jurisdiction for prosecutions in American civilian courts, and of overcoming immunity deals given to defendants by American officials on the scene.
But in April 25, 2011, a federal appeals court reopened the criminal case against four former American military contractors accused of manslaughter in connection with the Nisour Square shooting in 2007.
Read More…
The Baghdad Shooting
On Sept. 16, 2007, a convoy of four armored vehicles carrying Blackwater guards armed with automatic rifles rolled through Baghdad. Out on a day in which an explosion had the city on edge, a man was shot in the head while driving, yet his car kept rolling. The guards responded with a barrage of gunfire and explosive weapons, leaving 17 dead and 24 wounded.
The shootings, in the middle of traffic, set off an anti-American political firestorm in Iraq and an international debate over the role of private security contractors in modern war zones. The Blackwater guards were accused of firing wildly and indiscriminately from their convoy into other cars and at Iraqi civilians. The guards defended their actions, saying they were responding to fire from insurgents.
The Nisour Square shootings became a watershed event in the Iraq war, and led the Iraqi government to demand greater sovereignty and control over foreign contractors operating in the country. The Baghdad government later demanded and won the right to subject foreign contractors to Iraqi law, while the United States government grudgingly began to impose greater curbs on the freewheeling activities of the personnel guarding American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The former employees of Blackwater Worldwide were accused of manslaughter after the fatal shooting. But the charges were dismissed in December 2009 by a federal judge in Washington, who criticized the Justice Department for its handling of the case and ruled that prosecutors had relied on tainted evidence.
In April 2011, however, an appeals panel ordered the case reopened. The three-judge appeals panel, disagreeing with the judge’s decision, sent the case back, ordering Judge Ricardo M. Urbina of Federal District Court to review the evidence against each defendant individually.
The appeals court ruling was a victory for the Justice Department, which had been bruised by Judge Urbina’s ruling taking it to task for an overzealous prosecution.
Blackwater itself never truly recovered from the shooting. It quickly became the subject of numerous Congressional and federal investigations and lawsuits for a broad range of activities in Iraq and elsewhere.
Shell Companies
After Blackwater was roundly condemned for its conduct in Iraq, Blackwater created a web of more than 30 shell companies or subsidiaries in part to obtain millions of dollars in American government contracts.
While it is not clear how many of those businesses won contracts, at least three had deals with the United States military or the Central Intelligence Agency. Since 2001, the intelligence agency has awarded up to $600 million in classified contracts to Blackwater and its affiliates.
The network of companies — which includes several businesses located in offshore tax havens — allowed Blackwater to obscure its involvement in government work from contracting officials or the public, and to assure a low profile for any of its classified activities.
Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Armed Services Committee, has requested that the Justice Department investigate whether Blackwater officers misled the government when using subsidiaries to solicit contracts.
The settlement with the State Department followed lengthy talks between Blackwater and the State Department that dealt with the violations as an administrative matter, allowing the firm to avoid criminal charges. It does not resolve other legal troubles still facing Blackwater and its former executives and other personnel.
Those include the indictments of five former executives on weapons and obstruction charges; a federal investigation into evidence that Blackwater officials sought to bribe Iraqi government officials; and the arrest of two former Blackwater guards on federal murder charges stemming from the killing of two Afghans in 2009.
Relationship With the C.I.A.
In December 2009, The New York Times reported that private security guards from Blackwater participated in some of the C.I.A.’s most sensitive activities — clandestine raids with agency officers against people suspected of being insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan and the transporting of detainees, according to former company employees and intelligence officials.
The raids against suspects occurred on an almost nightly basis during the height of the Iraqi insurgency from 2004 to 2006, with Blackwater personnel playing central roles in what company insiders called “snatch and grab” operations.
Instead of simply providing security for C.I.A. officers, several former Blackwater guards have said they at times became partners in missions to capture or kill militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, a practice that raises questions about the use of guns for hire on the battlefield.
Separately, former Blackwater employees said they helped provide security on some C.I.A. flights transporting detainees in the years after the 2001 terror attacks in the United States.
Blackwater’s partnership with the C.I.A. has been enormously profitable for the North Carolina-based company, and became even closer after several top agency officials joined Blackwater.
The C.I.A.’s continuing relationship with the company has drawn harsh criticism from some members of Congress, who argue that the company’s tarnished record should preclude it from such work.
Nonetheless, in June 2010 the State Department awarded Blackwater a $120 million contract to provide security at its regional offices in Afghanistan, while the C.I.A. renewed the firm’s $100 million security contract for its station in Kabul. At the time, the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, defended the decision, saying that the company had offered the lowest bid and had “cleaned up its act.”
Company Founder Erik Prince
For a time, the company’s founder, Erik Prince, had ambitions to turn Blackwater into an informal arm of the American foreign policy and national security apparatus, and proposed to the C.I.A. to create a “quick reaction force” that could handle paramilitary operations for the spy agency around the world. He had hopes that Blackwater’s military prowess could be an influential force in regional conflicts around the world.
Mr. Prince, a former Navy Seal member and the heir to an auto parts fortune, has tried to shed his ties to Blackwater and its past activities. He overhauled the company’s management in 2009, changed its name, and in later 2010 sold the privately held company. He also moved with his family to Abu Dhabi from the United States, a move that colleagues say was a result of his deep anger and frustration over the intense scrutiny he and his firm have received.
While Mr. Prince stepped down from any management or operational role, he was expected to have a financial interest in his former company’s future. The company was subject to an agreement it reached with the State Department in August 2010. Under the settlement, the company paid $42 million in fines over hundreds of violations of United States export control regulations, permitting it to continue to compete for government contracts.
The new buyers hoped to recast the company as a military training organization instead of a private security service. The company’s training center in Moyock has trained more than 50,000 United States government personnel and allied forces. The buyers hope to receive new contracts to train forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, among other locations, especially as the United States withdraws troops and needs to train local forces.
Somalia Operation
In January 2011, Mr. Prince was said to be backing an effort by a South African mercenary firm to insert itself in Somalia’s civil war. According to a report by the African Union, an organization of African states, Mr. Prince provided initial funding for a project by Saracen International to win contracts with Somalia’s embattled government. The Somali government has been cornered into a small patch of Mogadishu by the Shabab, a Somali militant group with ties to Al Qaeda.
The company, with corporate offshoots in Uganda and other countries, was formed with the remnants of Executive Outcomes, a private mercenary firm composed largely of former South African special operations troops that operated throughout Africa in the 1990s.
According to a Jan. 12, 2011 confidential report by the African Union, Mr. Prince “is at the top of the management chain of Saracen and provided seed money for the Saracen contract.” A Western official working in Somalia says he believes that it was Mr. Prince who first raised the idea of the Saracen contract with members of the Emirates’ ruling families, with whom he has a close relationship. Mr. Prince could not be reached for comment.
With its barely functional government and a fierce hostility to foreign armies since the hasty American withdrawal from Mogadishu in the early 1990s, Somalia is a country where Western militaries have long feared to tread. This has created an opportunity for private security companies like Saracen to fill the security vacuum created by years of civil war.
Days after the disclosure of the African Union report, many of Somalia’s biggest financial supporters, including the United States, have questioned the wisdom of the deal. Somali officials, in turn, cooled to the idea of working with Saracen.
Salim Saleh named in Somali ‘mercenary’ deal
http://www.ugandacorrespondent.com/articles/2011/01/salim-saleh-named-in-%e2%80%98mercenary%e2%80%99-deals-in-somalia/
By John Stephen Katende
31st January 2011
Gen. Salim Saleh: Is he a suspect?
President Yoweri Museveni’s young brother Caleb Akandwanaho aka General Salim Saleh may be linked to possible involvement in mercenary activities in war-torn Somalia, Uganda Correspondent can exclusively reveal.
The details emerged after Saracen International; a company associated with Gen. Salim Saleh, lost a lucrative contract to undertake some work in Somalia. Our source in Mogadishu said the Transitional Federal Government [TFG] of Somalia declared last week, Thursday 27th January that it had severed its relationship with Saracen International.
The decision, we are told, came after a closed door cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed in the capital Mogadishu. Somalia’s Deputy Security Minister Ibrahim Mohamed Yarow confirmed that cabinet had indeed cancelled the agreement that the TFG government had signed with Saracen International to train Somali troops and to revive social services including building health facilities in Mogadishu.
The decision, he said, was reached after Somalia’s TFG government landed on evidence which suggested that Saracen International may have been involved mercenary activities. “…The cabinet has today overwhelmingly voted against Saracen International on the basis of mercenary acts. So the cabinet has revoked the agreement with this company”, Ibrahim Mohamed Yarow said.
The Deputy Security Minister added that while there is no doubt that his government requires assistance, as government, he said, the TFG will only enter into contractual agreements with distinguished and clean companies. He also said the cabinet’s decision on Saracen International was “irrevocable”.
The TFG’s decision to revoke Saracen International’s contract follows widespread expression of concern by several foreign governments including the US. Philip J. Crowley, a US State Department Spokesman, said in December that the American government was “…concerned about the lack of transparency” of Saracen’s financing and plans.
According to a New York Times report of 20th January 2011, “…at least one of Saracen’s past forays into training militias drew an international rebuke. Saracen’s Uganda subsidiary was implicated in a 2002 United Nations Security Council report for training rebel paramilitary forces in Congo”.
Is war a lucrative source of business for powerful men?
Other than Burundi, Uganda is the only other country in Africa that has contributed thousands of soldiers to the AU’s AMISOM peacekeeping mission in Somalia. The same New York Times report identified one of Saracen Uganda’s owners as Lt. Gen. Salim Saleh, the retired half-brother of Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni.
Salim Saleh’s possible conflict of interest also highlights some crucial things in this terribly complex story. One of the things is that the lines that separate government security officials and owners or leaders of private armies have become so fuzzy that you can never really be sure as to the motivations of any individual player.
As mercenary forces become more and more prominent in armed conflicts around the world, the profit motive becomes almost impossible to rule out. In other words, it’s almost impossible to know the real reasons that fuel the conflicts in which mercenaries play a role. UPC party President Dr. Olara Otunnu for example, has accused some UPDF soldiers of having had vested interests in prolonging the Kony war in northern Uganda.
The UPDF of course denied Otunnu’s claims. But the New York Times report also accused General Saleh and other top Ugandan army officers of using their ties to paramilitaries to plunder Congolese diamonds, gold and timber. But what exactly is Saracen International? Who really owns it? Our efforts to get a comment from Saracen International were futile by press time.
So for the time being, it may be fair to say that no one really knows for sure what Saracen International is, and who owns it. What one can say however is that Saracen International is definitely a murky trade name that is shared by a number of private security companies across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America. Whether that is a coincidence or not, no one really knows.
What we can confirm without fear of contradiction is that Saracen International is fully established in Uganda; see http://saracen.co.ug/index.php. Most of the other companies however deny or downplay any financial or managerial relationships between them. A few have however been linked to the infamous South African mercenary firm called Executive Outcomes; the same company that allegedly tried to send mercenaries to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea in order to tap into the country’s oil and mineral wealth.
Saracen International has also been linked to a certain Erik Prince; the man whose company Blackwater is allegedly financing a “Counter-Piracy” mercenary squad in Somalia. Both the New York Times and Associated Press have carried similar allegations against Saracen International on the strength of “confidential” reports leaked from the African Union.
Somalia has been without a proper central government since 1991 when President Siad Barre was overthrown by armed warlords. That incident effectively condemned Somalia to decades of civil war. END. Please log into www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.
SARACEN INTERNATIONAL IN SOMALIA WHAT IS NEXT?
By Said Dualeh
http://www.mareeg.com/fidsan.php?sid=18301&tirsan=3
24 dec 2010 (Mareeg.com) The TFG of Somalia is not achieving anything for the people of Somalia, it is only adding to the miseries of the people of Somalia proper. I have been a supporter of all types of governments in Somalia from The collapse of the Siad Barre regime1991 to the present. In my previous articles I have defended Sheikh Sharif and the parliamentary warlord Sharif Hassan thinking that they had a little interest in their heart for our people the people of Somalia who unfortunately do not know their rights as citizens of Somalia.
We need a bill of rights for Somalia to get out of this corrupt and failed
state status.
We as Somalis can be successful in business, education and professions any other country in the world as proven by the Somali Diaspora except on our own country-Somalia, why? Go figure the answer and you may have solved the Somali Dilemma.
The Somali people do not know that they do not have to put up with corrupt leaders, leaders who associate themselves with the enemies of the people of Somalia, they do not need to put up with un educated and unenlightened religious leaders who hide behind veils and brain washed youngsters who never grew up as people with rights and never seen a just government who cares about its people and their welfare. Somalis do not need to put up with International organizations and Non governmental agencies who live off destruction, mayhem and underdevelopment in less fortunate countries like Somalia where they can test their new medicines and unorthodox, untested theories of development and peacekeepers who look after their own interest.
At First in Somalia after 1991 it was unstable government getting in contract with companies that dumped Nuclear Waste on our shores and contracting with companies who took every piece of metal out of the country and sold it as Salvage waste to Asian counties. We have seen Ambassadors trying to sell off Somali government properties overseas, and then we have seen presidents, prime ministers and regional authorities printing illegal currencies in a clandestine ways that made people wonder if this poor country had anyone who cares about it. We have seen where lack of transparency and accountability can lead to misunderstanding of MOU’s memorandum of understanding which did not reference to the law of the sea- regulations spearheaded by the United Nations. We have seen Ethiopia trying to destroy Somalia using the old colonial adage (Divide them then Rule them). If anyone ever thought Ethiopia wants to see a unified Somalia or a strong Somalia think again as you may be living in a wonderland. The same goes for all of our neighbors and our Arab brethren.
We have seen how corrupt the current Somali government officials are they sold the .SO protocol bestowed to Somalia as a nation among 192 others. The same people have contracted with Saracen International- one of the new private military companies(PMC’s) such Executive Outcomes(EO), Sandline Co, Strategic Consulting International(SCI), KBR, Heritage Oil and Gas Co. The name and their symbol of Saracen International looks like a middle ages Templar Knight on horseback trying to show the “light”(Christianity) to heathens in sub-Saharan Africa. The company is run by shady characters from the former SADF- South African Defense Force and former employees of the now infamous but defunct Executive Outcomes. The current TFG Finance minister stated that the agreement was signed by Sheikh Sharif- through his trusted then chief of Cabinet Abdulkarim Jama, the current Minister of information and Post & Communication. On the other side it was signed by Lafras Luitingh aka Louis Yssel- member of the notorious Former South African law enforcement agency Civil Cooperation Bureau(CCB)- in some pulished reports the finger was pointed to him during the truth commission hearings in the new South Africa that he killed Dr. David Webster and Anton Lubowski (ANC Activists in the former South africa).Lafras Luitingh aka Louis Yssel has a checkered past that will scare anyone who reads about world intelligence reports. He had dealing with characters such as Tim Spicer, Tony Buckingham, Eeben Barlow and the late Former South Africa skin head chief of police Henrick Van der Bergh, the creator B.OS.S and later the CCB where Lafras Luitingh got his training in sabotage, political assassinations, and intelligence gathering on dissidents. He was later recruited by (Executive Outcomes) EO for their Angola, Mozambique, Malawi jobs and later Sierra Leone.
The plane currently held in Hargeisa is the type used by these private armies especially Saracen and they buy their weapons from the former Soviet satellite countries. The two South Africans on the plane in Hargeisa were released as fake Journalist but they were Saracen International employees. They have connections with the British Foreign Office who called the Somaliland foreign minister. Why did they not allow pictures to be taken or invited the media to the kangaroo trail held in Hargeisa. South African intelligence has some clout over Hargeisa for different a reason, that is where the late Somaliland President Egal died in a hospital in South Africa.
The contact is Mohamed Ibrahim Egal’s former wife Edna who was at one time
Foreign Minister of Somaliland and who owns a hospital that received assistance from South Africa. Soon there will be another mock trial in
Hargeisa, Somalia Saracen will give the weapons on the plane to the Somaliland administration formatting it as confiscation by their court and they will release the plane and the crew intact. Saracen will once again continue the operations they were hired for.
Sheikh Sharif of the TFG , Museveni of Uganda, Farole of Puntland, & Sharif’s Ala Shiekh group led by Abdulkarim Jama( former VA mosques bookkeeper) and his prime minister (Formaggio) and his defense minister(Fiqi) (2 former Somali embassy bookkeepers from Washington) the Finance minister (Halane)& The Foreign Minister (Omaar) have no clue who they are dealing with at Saracen International. Museveni’s half brother is just a cover up. This project is the deep throat of Somalia and we need transparency in these dealings with select members of the Somali parliament.
Saracen guys and their friends have helped countries overthrew elected officials and everything they do is for money. These guys were so powerful at one time that they had The British navy servicing their Antonov and soviet type helicopters near the coast of Africa. If a country like Somalia does not have money these private military companies barter for oil and fishing rights and sell those rights at a premium to the highest bidder.
They have close relationship with the leadership in the Emirates and even a stronger one with current Sultan of Oman whom they assisted in overthrowing his father off the throne.
Both the UN and the OAU despise these private military companies because they want to put them out of business. Amisom is a cash cow for Uganda who does not want the current situation to end and they sustain a weak TFG government whose diplomatic failures include a drug dealing former Ambassador in China and they keep recycling former diplomats to the UN mission in NY who have publicly stated that he will join his clansmen back home to kill people and destabilize peaceful areas. TFG are not bringing to justice the ambassador who sold embassy property in Kenya. Will this government survive without peace keepers? I do not think so.
Saracen International is a rented military company mostly comprised of former special forces, formerly known as “dogs of war”, mercenaries and now they are known as security trainers and consultants (their sanitized PR name). Their specialty is to loot poor African countries who are led by corrupt individuals with no integrity.
The Somali people have a choice to change their leadership, or else if they want to stand on the sidelines as always thinking that someone is going to come to rescue them or should we as Somalis get our hands dirty and come together and resolve our clannish divisions once and for all since we have seen that no clan in Somalia is able to subjugate the others and live in peace or wait for our destiny to be decided by organizations or private military companies who follow their interest.
Best Regards,
Thank You,
Said Hersi Dualeh
*Freelance journalist*
Anaheim, California- USA
Erik Prince and Saracen International Doing Death’s Business in Somalia ‘Prince of Mercenaries’ who wreaked havoc in Iraq turns up in Somalia
Blackwater founder sets up new force to tackle piracy
By Guy Adams in Los Angeles
Saturday, 22 January 2011SHARE PRINTEMAILTEXT SIZE NORMALLARGEEXTRA LARGE
Erik Prince, the American founder of the private security firm Blackwater Worldwide, has cropped up at the centre of a controversial scheme to establish a new mercenary force to crack down on piracy and terrorism in the war-torn East African country of Somalia.
The project, which emerged yesterday when an intelligence report was leaked to media in the United States, requires Mr Prince to help train a private army of 2,000 Somali troops that will be loyal to the country’s United Nations-backed government. Several neighbouring states, including the United Arab Emirates, will pay the bills.
Mr Prince is working in Somalia alongside Saracen International, a murky South African firm which is run by a former officer from the Civil Co-operation Bureau, an apartheid-era force notorious for killing opponents of the white minority government.
News of his latest project has alarmed, though hardly surprised, critics of Blackwater. The firm made hundreds of millions of dollars from the “war on terror”, but was severely tarnished by a string of incidents in post-invasion Iraq, in which its employees were accused of committing dozens of unlawful killings.
Mr Prince, a 41-year-old former US Navy Seal with links to the Bush administration, subsequently rebranded the company “Xe Services” and sold his stake in it. But he remains entangled in a string of lawsuits pertaining to the alleged recklessness of the firm.
For most of the past year, he has been living in Abu Dhabi, where he has close relations with the government and feels better positioned to dodge lawsuits. In an interview with a men’s magazine, he recently declared that the UAE’s opaque legal system will make it “harder for the jackals to get my money”.
The exact nature of his sudden presence in Somalia remains unclear. The Associated Press said yesterday that the army Mr Prince is training will focus on fighting pirates and Islamic rebels.
The leaked intelligence report which prompted the news agency’s story was compiled by the African Union, an organisation of African nations. It claimed that Mr Prince’s money had enabled Saracen International to gain the contract to train and run the private militia. But that element of the report was flatly contradicted by a spokesman for the Blackwater founder, who claimed that Mr Prince had “no financial role of any kind in this matter”.
In a written statement, the spokesman, Mark Corallo, added: “it is well known that he has long been interested in helping Somalia overcome the scourge of piracy. To that end, he has at times provided advice to many different anti-piracy efforts.” He declined to answer any further questions.
Whatever the exact details of Mr Prince’s role, his presence in Somalia will inevitably lead to renewed soul-searching about the growing privatisation of warfare. Critics of mercenary organisations, which are often prepared to operate where traditional armies fear to tread, claim they are often trigger-happy and lack proper accountability. In Iraq, Blackwater employees shot dead dozens of civilians; 17 people were killed in one incident alone in Nisour Square, Baghdad.
Criminal charges were eventually brought in the US against five Blackwater employees. However, they were dropped in 2009 after a federal judge ruled that the defendants’ rights had been violated during the gathering of evidence. Iraq’s Interior Ministry subsequently expelled all contractors who had worked with the firm at the time of the Nisour Square shooting.
Somalia, where the country’s UN-backed regime is fighting a civil war against al-Shabaab, a group of Islamic insurgents with links to al-Qa’ida, is, if anything, a more volatile country than post-invasion Iraq.
The government controls only a small portion of the capital, Mogadishu, where it has the support of 8,000 UN troops from Uganda and Burundi. It is training an army to extend its reach, but observers fear that its ranks will be weakened by the arrival of Mr Prince – who will pay his troops a far better wage.
Saracen’s shady corporate structure has not inspired confidence in its accountability. In 2002, the UN accused its Ugandan subsidiary of training rebel paramilitaries in the Congo. Recently, the firm has claimed to be registered to addresses in Lebanon, Liberia, Uganda and the UAE, some of which seemed not to exist when reporters tried visiting.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo…a-2191270.html
WHO IS SARACEN INTERNATIONAL? WHAT IS IT DOING IN SOMALIA?
“Saracen” is what the Crusaders used to call the Muslims, back in the day.
“Saracen International” is a trade name shared, coincidentally or not, by a number of private security companies across Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America. These companies deny or downplay any financial or managerial relationships between them. A few, however, reportedly derive from the infamous (and pioneering) South African mercenary firm, Executive Outcomes.
Yesterday, both The New York Times and the Associated Press carried a truly mind-bending story on Saracen International, based on a “confidential” African Union report that had apparently been leaked to both news organizations.
The report claims that none other than Blackwater founder Erik Prince has been financing a “counter-piracy” mercenary squad in Somalia, through Saracen.
Somalia, a chaotic demi-state, was the scene of an iconic American military defeat 18 years ago, not to mention a one-time home base for Osama Bin Laden.
It appears that Prince, an evangelical American mercenary with longstanding ties to the Pentagon and the CIA, has partnered with a group of equally notorious South African guns-for-hire for a paramilitary mission in an Islamic nation, under a corporate banner harking back to the Crusades. But what does all that mean?
Mercenaries don’t work for free
Is this an American war by proxy? Notably, this Somali “counter-piracy” mission is advised by a former White House lawyer and by a former CIA official. However, it is also bankrolled in large part by someone in the government of Prince’s new home, the United Arab Emirates.
Reading between the lines of yesterday’s news stories, the report connecting Prince and Saracen was most likely leaked by someone who felt, understandably, that the presence of mercenaries in Somalia undermines the African Union effort there, and persists on account of official corruption.
Uganda is supplying troops to the uniformed African Union force in Somalia. And, according to AP reports, Saracen is “associated with” the younger brother of Uganda’s president, Salim Saleh. That curious phrasing suggests a mutually beneficial financial relationship. Other African media sources say Salim Saleh is an “investor” or “major shareholder” in Saracen (Uganda).
Salim Saleh’s apparent conflict of interest highlights the key take-away from this incredibly complex story: The lines that separate government security officials and the leaders of private armies have become so fuzzy that you can never really be sure as to the motivations of any individual player. As mercenary forces become more and more prominent in armed conflicts around the world, the profit motive becomes difficult to separate from other casus belli.
In other words, it’s almost impossible to know the real reasons driving any conflict in which mercenaries play a leading role.
Government connections
The Saracen-in-Somalia story started gaining notice after a Washington Times story revealed the role of a former George W. Bush administration official in coordinating Saracen’s contract with the Somali government.
The former official, Pierre R. Prosper, is pictured here in a 2003 photo from his a former gig as an ambassador for “war crimes issues.”
Prosper and Michael Shanklin, a former CIA officer stationed in Mogadishu, previously told the AP they were being paid “paid by a Muslim nation [they] declined to identify” to advise the Somali government on “legal” and “security” matters. That unnamed “Muslim nation,” it now appears, is the UAE.
Late last year, the Washington Times and the AP reported that Prosper met with United Nations monitors over their concerns that Saracen may have violated a long-running (but ineffectual) arms embargo on Somalia. (Mogadishu, a city that has roughly the population of Houston, Texas, averaged 534 “weapon-related casualties” per month last autumn, according to the UN.)
Prosper told the Times “that so far, no arms were shipped to the training camp, to the best of his knowledge.” He told the AP that “Saracen is doing the military training” in Somalia. Yet the same story quotes Saracen (Uganda) chief executive Bill Pelser as disclaiming the company’s training role in Somalia.
Pelser denied being involved in the training program in Puntland…saying he merely made introductions for another company called Saracen Lebanon.
Sure. Got it.
Lebanese authorities have no record of a company called Saracen. Pelser did not respond to requests for contact information for Saracen Lebanon.
Yesterday’s AP story features quotes from Saracen (Lebanon) executive Lafras Luitingh—evidently a distinct entity from the Ugandan company of the same name that is also led by former employees of Executive Outcomes.
Also, it’s supposed to be completely irrelevant that Saracen (Uganda) goes around “ma[king] introductions” for Saracen (Lebanon).
In the AP story, Luitingh says “the company had sought to keep the project secret to surprise the pirates.” (Because the pirates don’t know they might be attacked?) He “declined to say whether [Blackwater founder Erik] Prince was involved in the project and said [Prince] was not part of Saracen.”
Is your head spinning yet? If not, it will be soon. Keep reading.
Saracen International, Not To Be Confused With Saracen International
The AP turned up
at least three Saracens — the one registered in Lebanon, and two run by Luitingh’s business partner and based in Uganda, where government office employees told the AP the registration papers have disappeared. An AP reporter in Beirut could not find the address Luitingh’s company provided in the Somali contract. Lebanese authorities had no address listed for Saracen in Lebanon and said it is based in the United Arab Emirates.
Saracen (Uganda)’s website says the company has branches in South Africa, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Hong Kong, Angola, Zambia, Sudan and Botswana.
My own research turned up two more “Saracen Internationals,” not counting a Spanish real-estate firm with that name.
One, Saracen International Ltd, is based in Manchester, UK.
The corporate address of record is at the Towers Business Park in Manchester. The website registration, however, returns both that address and another, one shared with a café in the southern suburb of Stockport.
An email to the Yahoo account of the listed website registrant, Sira Yaqub, bounced back undelivered. The woman who answered the phone at the UK Saracen in Manchester office suggested calling back on Monday.
The other Saracen International I found is a limited-liability company based in Phoenix, Arizona.
This Saracen International is registered to William G. Lawrence and Tjaart Andre Van Der Walt, both of Phoenix. Lawrence returned a call placed to the company’s listed phone number.
“I have no relationship to the UK company of the same name. I don’t operate in Southern Africa,” he says of Saracen (Arizona).
Van Der Walt, Lawrence says, is a “friend” who has “never been part of the corporation,” although records show the LLC is registered at Van Der Walt’s home address. Lawrence says Van Der Walt, whose first name is also spelled in public records as “Thaart,” emigrated from South Africa 16 years ago and is now an American citizen.
I asked if Van Der Walt ever worked for Executive Outcomes. Lawrence says he doesn’t know, and hadn’t heard of that company.
He has, however, heard of the other Saracens. “I got a call from Somalia asking them to train their coast guard to fight the piracy threat. Only then I became aware that there was another Saracen International,” Lawrence says.
Doesn’t it seem strange, I suggested, that all these private security companies with an international client base—Lawrence’s company has operations in Jordan and the UAE—seem content to share a business name, and aren’t suing one another for copyright infringement? “I can’t account for that except…[the name] has positive connotations in the Arabic world,” Lawrence says.
Positive because, after all, they fought the Crusaders.
Lawrence says his company sells a Chevrolet Suburban outfitted with a concealed six-barrel gatling gun that can pop out of the hood and fire 50 rounds a second in every direction. The car, called the Raptor, costs upward of $300,000.
The Raptor is not something that you’d ever want to cut off in heavy traffic. You can watch its gunner blow up a hatchback on YouTube.
Is this the next must-have vehicle for Arizona’s soccer moms?
“The people we do business with are national leaders. They are always subject to threats of one kind or another. King Abdullah [of Saudi Arabia] has had four assassination attempts on him,” Lawrence says. “He doesn’t ride in our car…but we’re in his entourage.”
(Unlike the other companies that share its name, Saracen (Arizona) does not have an up-and-running website of its own. However, the marketing video for the Raptor contains a plug for saracen.org. That domain is currently listed as for sale.)
Muddied (Black)waters
Yesterday’s AP story on Prince’s ties to Saracen (Uganda) connects another company to the dubiously funded “anti-piracy” mission there.
Afloat Leasing, which owns two ships that have been working with Saracen, said it was Liberian-registered, but an AP reporter didn’t find it at the address given or in Liberian records.
I found an “Afloat Leasing Ltd” registered in South Africa. Records show this company owns a ship called the Seafarer, which departed Durban, South Africa roughly one month ago and was due to call last week in the UAE, a course that would take it past the pirate-plagued Horn of Africa.
This may or may not be the same “Afloat Leasing” named by the AP.
And as long as we’re in the caveats department, it should be noted that Prince, who recently abandoned his “redneck mansion” for the UAE, has denied, through a spokesperson, having any “financial role of any kind in this matter” with Saracen.
It should also be noted that Prince has ostensibly cut his ties with Blackwater, the company he built from nothing, although he’s tight with the new owners, whoever they are.
Did I say Blackwater? Of course, I meant Xe. Or whatever it is now. It’s hard to keep all these companies straight, sometimes. Odd, isn’t it? Most companies try so hard to come up with a memorable name. But with these companies and their constantly changing, generic-sounding brands—not to mention the roving headquarters and opaque registration—it’s almost as though they’re trying to confuse people. Like they don’t want people to remember who they are, or something.
The West Goes To War For Oil And Power In Libya
By Steve Horn @ Alter Net:
On Friday, October 14, President Barack Obama announced he would be sending 100 Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) forces to Uganda to “remove from the battlefield” (meaning capture or kill) the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), Joseph Kony. ”I believe that deploying these U.S. Armed Forces furthers U.S. national security interests and foreign policy and will be a significant contribution toward counter-LRA efforts in central Africa,” wrote Obama in a letter to U.S. House Majority Leader, John Boehner, R-OH.
The LRA, whose horrific deeds have been have been well-documented by scores of human rights reports and the documentary film, Invisible Children, can best be described as a Christian cult militia engaged in violent armed rebellion against the Ugandan government, located primarily in northern Uganda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan. An arrest warrant was issued in 2005 by the International Criminal Court against the LRA leadership for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Kony, the LRA ringleader, possibly has over 80 wives (i.e. sex slaves), according to a 2009 story by the Guardian, and has fathered over 40 children.
It gets worse.
According to a May 2009 article in Newsweek, ”[H]e and the hundreds of forcibly conscripted children who serve as his killing squads are feared throughout the region for their horrific levels of brutality and the butchery of tens of thousands of defenseless civilians. Their swath of destruction has displaced well over 2 million people. Kony has forced new male recruits to rape their mothers and kill their parents. Former LRA members say the rebels sometimes cook and eat their victims.”
The mainstream media, at least those who have covered this new U.S. military adventure, have taken the Obama administration at face value on its stated claim that JSOC troops are necessary in Uganda and neighboring countries, for the purpose of murdering the elusive and brutal war criminal-at-large, Joseph Kony.
But is this the true motive for sending JSOC troops into the region? A probe into the last several years of geopolitical posturing in Africa by the United States reveals another tale. It is the tale of a 21st century “scramble for Africa” for the procurement of oil, using imperial tools, such as drones, mercenaries and military bases, in a desperate effort to gain control of this valuable commodity.
An African Scramble for Oil
In October 2008, AFRICOM, the United States Africa Command, became the U.S. military’s sixth regional Unified Combatant Command center, joining those already housed in South America (SOUTHCOM), North America (NORTHCOM), Europe (EUCOM), the Middle East (CENTCOM), and the Pacific (USPACOM). The Unified Combatant Command centers serve as regional strategic hubs for the U.S. military planners to plot and implement the ways in which the U.S. will dominate these various regions for whatever it might deem to be in line with the national interest or national security purposes.
AFRICOM, though, did not come out of the blue and was years in the making before its realization. Not long after 9/11, in early January 2002, a key symposium titled “African Oil: A Priority for U.S. National Security and African Development” took place in Washington, DC; it was hosted by the neoconservative think-tank, the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies (IASPS).
IASPS is most famous for its authorship of a paper called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm,” a 1996 paper that, among other things, called for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, foreshadowing the 2003 invasion of Iraq by the neoconservative-lead Bush administration foreign policy team.
At the symposium, then Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter Kantsteiner III, stated, “African oil is a national strategic interest…[and] it’s people like you who will…bring the oil home.”
Later, in May 2004, Kantsteiner chaired a congressionally funded Africa Policy Advisory Panel report titled, “Rising U.S. States in Africa,” in which he stated, “African oil is of national strategic interest to us, and it will increase and become more important as we go forward.”
In the midst of these summits, the U.S. set up crucial military bases — in spring 2003 in Djibouti, a base called Camp Lemmonier, and in 2004 at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda.
The U.S. was now firmly implanted in the region to begin an African safari, featuring, most prominently, tours of prospective and already existing oil rigs and pipelines spanning every contour of the continent.
Oil Safari to Uganda
Not long after AFRICOM became a reality, multinational corporations also flocked into Uganda to search for oil.
The search was a flaming success story, with 2.5 billion barrels of oil now having been discovered, but still to this date, not yet procured. The royalties accompanying the oil’s usage could reach up to $2 billion a year by 2015, reported the Economist in May 2010.
This oil is located off of Lake Albert in northwest Uganda, a lake shared by both Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Multinational corporations are required to sign something known as a Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) with the Ugandan government in order to drill for Uganda’s oil. In essence, a PSA is a contractual agreement between a foreign corporation benefiting from a country’s resources and the government of a country whose resources are being benefited from.
In October 2006, according to a WikiLeaks cable, Tullow Oil, a British company, and Heritage Oil, a Canadian company, signed a PSA with the Ugandan government, led by President Yoweri Musveni. This particular PSA, though, was no ordinary one, and indeed, could serve, in part, as an explanation for the logic of Obama’s October 14 announcement.
For the first three years the PSA was signed, the details were kept secret from everyone but upper-level Tullow and Heritage executives and Museveni’s inner circle. A February 2010 report written by PLATFORM, a British nonprofit organization, titled, “Contracts Curse: Uganda’s oil agreements place profit before people,” explains the PSA best and for the first time, made public its content.
The PSA, PLATFORM explained, “contain[s] no clauses covering security provision[s]…There is no public agreement setting out the relationship between the oil companies and the military or police forces. Thus it is unclear what promises and guarantees the Ugandan government has made to ensure security and what rights the oil companies have been awarded.”
This raised numerous vital questions for PLATFORM, including, “Do oil company security or private military contractors have the right or authority to arrest, injure or kill those they perceive as a threat?” and “Is the Ugandan government incentivised to prioritise security interests over the human rights of local populations?”
That same report also included revelations by PLATFORM that the Ugandan government had constructed a “new military base on ten square miles” near Lake Albert, where the oil was located. The report also disclosed that Museveni had created something called an Oil Wells Protection Unit (OWPU), which amounted to his own security forces, or mercenaries, guarding oil rigs.
Concerned about the OWPU, PLATFORM wrote, “Apparently its mandate is ‘to provide physical security for the oil and gas industry’ and ‘conduct strategic intelligence activities in all areas where oil will be processed and marketed.’ However, the OWPU has no Web site and no clearly known structure or chain of command…In this context, the OWPU could easily be misused to repress opposition to oil extraction activities, further political gains by the government and commit human rights abuses without accountability.”
Enter Heritage Oil and Ties to Private Mercenary Armies
Possibly the most crucial fact about the undisclosed clauses concerning security provisions in the PSA, was this vital detail: The Canadian oil company Heritage, which is owned by Tony Buckingham, who many credit for being the first innovator behind the modern-day private military corporation (PMC) (think Blackwater USA, now known as Xe Services), was formerly the main stakeholder in the Albertine Basin.
In 2010, Heritage sold its stake in the project to the British company Tullow Oil for $1.5 billion. Though Heritage is no longer exploring for oil in the hopes of drilling for it in Uganda, Buckingham’s background and business connections are still crucial to grasp.
Buckingham is a former officer of the British Special Air Service (SAS) — a parallel to the U.S. JSOC forces sent into Uganda by Obama — according to a 1997 story. In 1992 Buckingham became the founder and CEO of Heritage Oil. A year later, in 1993, Buckingham founded a PMC called Executive Outcomes (EO). EO officially closed shop in 1998, but during its time of existence, it consistently followed in the footsteps of the locations that Buckingham took Heritage’s oil rigs. And Buckingham’s close ties to mercenary armies did not terminate with EO’s fall. Instead, he formed a special relationship with a key figure, the half-brother of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Salim Saleh.
The special relationship between Saleh and Buckingham also goes a long way toward explaining the Obama decision to invade Uganda.
Salim Saleh, Erik Prince, and Guns-For-Hire in the Horn of Africa
Upon the eclipse of EO in 1998, rather than decay into oblivion, it instead morphed into a multi-tentacled machine of various PMC split-offs, the most crucial of which, at least as far as Uganda is concerned, is Saracen International.
Salim Saleh owns a 25-percent stake in Saracen. “[Saracen International] was formed with the remnants of Executive Outcomes, a private mercenary firm composed largely of former South African special operations troops who worked throughout Africa in the 1990s,” explained the New York Times in a January 2011 article.
Saleh, now Museveni’s military adviser, is a former high-ranking official for theUganda People’s Defence Force, the military of the Ugandan government. He is also a well-connected mercenary, as seen through his ownership stake in Saracen.
Saracen, in turns out, also maintains an important relationship with Blackwater USA founder and CEO, Erik Prince.
The same article that revealed the ties between EO and Saracen International also revealed that Prince possesses an ownership stake in Saracen. The Times wrote, “According to a Jan. 12 confidential report by the African Union, Mr. Prince ‘is at the top of the management chain of Saracen and provided seed money for the Saracen contract.’”
Blackwater, under Prince’s leadership, has been involved in the game of guns-for-hire in the Horn of Africa since February 2009, according to a WikiLeaks cable. The cable reveals that Blackwater won a contract to operate an armed ship, called McArthur, from a port in Djibouti, the country which is also home of the U.S. military’s Camp Lemonnier base.
The cable also reveals that McArthur ”will have an unarmed UAV” (Unarmed Vehicle, aka a drone), “will likely engage…Kenya in the future,” and that Blackwater “has briefed AFRICOM, CENTCOM, and Embassy Nairobi officials.” In other words, this means the Prince and Blackwater mission had the blessing of top-level U.S. military and diplomatic officials.
Could Prince’s and Saleh’s guns-for-hire be teaming up with JSOC forces in the Albertine basin to guard oil rigs? History provides some highly relavant precedent.
Erik Prince, Blackwater USA and Oil: History Repeating Itself?
Prince’s Blackwater has been involved in such engagements before. Rewind to Azerbaijan and Iraq, where Blackwater was tasked with guarding crucial oil pipelines and oil wells for the world’s wealthiest oil and natural gas corporations.
Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, in his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, revealed that “Blackwater USA was hired by the Pentagon…to deploy in Azerbaijan, where Blackwater would be tasked with establishing and training an elite…force modeled after the U.S. Navy SEALs that would ultimately protect the interests of the United States and its allies in a hostile region.
“Blackwater joined a U.S. corporate landscape [in the region] that included…corporations such as Bechtel, Halliburton, Chevron-Texaco, Unocal and ExxonMobil … Instead of sending in battalions of active U.S. military to Azerbaijan, the Pentagon deployed…Blackwater…that would serve a dual purpose: protecting the West’s new profitable oil and gas exploitation in a region historically dominated by Russia and Iran, and possibly laying the groundwork for an important forward operating base for an attack against Iran,” Scahill continued.
Azerbaijan, like Uganda, is home to a vast array of oil and natural gas, and also a key pipeline, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which, after reaching its respective coastal homes in Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, ends up on the global export market.
In Iraq, as revealed by the Guardian in a March 2004 article, Blackwater, via a Pentagon contract, recruited Chilean “commandos, other soldiers and seamen, paying them up to $4,000 a month to guard oil wells against attack by insurgents…many of [them] had trained under the military government of Augusto Pinochet.” Pinochet, many will recall, was the brutal dictator who came to power after the CIA-initiated 1973 coup of Salvador Allende.
Iraq, like Uganda and Azerbaijan, is home to vast amounts of oil. Major syndicates ranging from BP America, ExxonMobil, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips have all flocked to Iraq in the mad dash for Iraq’s resources since the 2003 onset of the ongoing U.S. occupation of Iraq.
WikiLeaks Cables Reveal Ugandan Oil Bid Corruption
ExxonMobil, teaming up with Tullow Oil, as seen through the lens of important Wikileaks State Department diplomatic cables, has also shown great interest in the economic opportunities surrounding oil exploration off of Lake Albert, as well as great concern over governmental corruption in the nascent Ugandan oil industry.
A key December 3, 2009 cable, titled, “Uganda: Corruption Allegations Accompany Arrival Of Major Oil Firms,” reads, “Executives from ExxonMobil visited Uganda on November 18-19, and met with Ambassador (Jerry) Lanier (the U.S. ambassador to Uganda), Mission Officers, the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD), Uganda’s Petroleum Exploration and Production Department (PEPD), and Tullow (Oil)…ExxonMobil representatives who traveled to Kampala said they were ‘very impressed’ with…the Ugandan government oil representatives…”
Roughly a month later, yet another important WikiLeaks-provided State Department diplomatic cable was produced on January 13, 2010, titled, “Uganda: Security Report Details Oil Sector Corruption,” which discusses the impacts rampant corruption unfolding in the Ugandan oil industry would have on the U.S. if the ExxonMobil deal falls through.
“A corrupt…agreement would undermine a potential multi-billion dollar deal between ExxonMobil and Tullow, and have serious long-term implications for U.S….in Uganda in terms of…economic development,” the cable reads.
The State Department’s diplomatic cables make it quite clear that ExxonMobil and its partner, Tullow Oil, were both deeply interested in the Ugandan oil industry, but also gravely concerned about corruption.
Yet, Tullow and ExxonMobil had little to worry about, based on both Prince’s ExxonMobil ties during his days at Blackwater USA, as well as a crucial March 2008 meeting between the Salim Saleh-led Ugandan military and high-level Tullow Oil officials, as exposed by Wikileaks.
Tullow’s Mercenary Presence Long in the Making at Lake Albert Basin
Tullow, as revealed by State Department diplomatic cables leaked to Wikileaks, has been building up a mercenary army presence in the Lake Albert area for over three years.
A March 2008 State Department diplomatic cable reads, “…Tullow Oil, one of the four exploration companies operating in western Uganda, said that as the oil activity on Lake Albert increased, a security presence would be vital.”
The cable also mentions that U.S. Ambassador to Uganda Steven Browning and Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa Rear Admiral Phillip Greene “met with representatives from Tullow Oil and the Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF), as well as local leaders…on March 4.” The UPDF is lead by Salim Saleh, who also owns a 25-percent ownership stake in Saracen International, the private mercenary army also owned in part by Erik Prince.
During the meeting it was also “noted that oil exploration and production would raise the profile of the area, which could lead to increased incidences of violence between Ugandan locals and security forces…” and the meeting concluded with a request for “an assessment team…to provide the Ugandan military with an organizational, doctrinal, training, and equipment needs assessment for a future lake security force.”
Toss into the ring the ongoing great power politics rivalry between the U.S. and China, and things become even more complex.
Great Power Politics Posturing in the Works?
Though ExxonMobil and Tullow Oil lost out on the corrupt oil bid in late 2009, while exploration has been done, drilling has yet to occur in Uganda. In that vein, 100 U.S. JSOC troops, likely teaming up with Erik Prince, Salim Saleh and Yoweri Museveni-backed mercenaries, have swooped into the Lake Albert area to secure the prize, oil, before its rival does.
The opponent? China.
On October 24, Tullow sold $2.9 billion worth of its shares of oil to France’s Total Oil and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), though it has yet to be approved by the Museveni government and requires his approval.
Throughout all of this, it is vital to bear in mind the bigger picture, which is that the United States and China have been competing against one another in the new “African Scramble” for Africa’s valuable oil resources.
Serge Michel and Michel Beuret, in their 2009 book China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa, write, “China’s advances in Africa’s oil-rich regions have been viewed with concern bordering on paranoia in the United States….[It] could…deteriorate into a a head-to-head clash between China and the United States, prompting the kind of open conflict that some see as inevitable by 2030.”
One has to wonder what will happen with regards to this recent oil deal, knowing the players involved, and seeing the geopolitical and resources maneuvering taking place in the Lake Albert region.
If the United States and its well-connected guns-for-hire have any say, Tullow Oil, Heritage Oil, ExxonMobil will take home all the royalties, and CNOOC will be sent home packing.
Another Piece of the Puzzle: Senate Bill 1067 of 2009
It appears that since the Lord’s Resistance Army Disarmament and Northern Uganda Recovery Act of 2009, Senate Bill 1067, a bill that called for, among other things, to “apprehend or remove Joseph Kony and his top commanders from the battlefield…and to disarm and demobilize the remaining Lord’s Resistance Army fighters,” the United States has Lake Albert targeted in its crosshairs.
An important provision squeezed into the bill was a section mandating that an official strategy be written up to “disarm and demobilize” the LRA.
“Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the President shall develop and submit to the appropriate committees of Congress a strategy to guide future United States support across the region,” the bill reads. “The strategy shall include…a description of how this engagement will fit within the context of broader efforts and policy objectives in the Great Lakes Region.”
The Great Lakes Region includes Lake Albert and “broader efforts and policy objectives” translates into, based on State Department diplomatic cables and public statements made in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the control of precious oil resources in the Albertine Basin.
Signed into law by Obama in May 2009, it is crucial to put when the bill was written into proper historical context.
As revealed by State Department diplomatic cables, this was roughly a year after the special meeting between Tullow Oil representatives; U.S. Ambassador to Uganda, Steven Browning; and then head of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa, Rear Admiral Phillip Greene near Lake Albert. It was also roughly half a year after the launch of AFRICOM.
Some may have been surprised by this latest announcement to invade another country by the Obama administration, but based on recent history, there are no real surprises here. Still, despite evidence that seems to fly in the face of the reason offered by Obama to send troops to Uganda, it is still worth scrutinizing his rationale.
Humanitarian Intervention for Kony?
If there is one thing that is nearly for certain, it is that the Lord’s Resistance Army and Joseph Kony, as awful as they are, likely have nothing to do with this most recent U.S. military engagement in Uganda.
In the end, it all comes back to oil, even if top-level U.S. officials maintain that this has “nothing to do with oil.”
For one, days before this incursion, it was announced that the “the Obama administration quietly waived restrictions on military aid to Chad, Yemen, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)–four countries with records of actively recruiting child soldiers…Any country even remotely close to the horn of Africa (like these distinguished four) is just too strategically important…So, for the time being, it’s still guns for the kids,” wrote Mother Jones.
One of the rationales Obama gave for sending JSOC troops to Uganda, was that the LRA recruits and uses child soldiers, which, given this recent decision, made for the second consecutive year, is certainly not something high on the list of Obama’s concerns.
Furthermore, if human rights were actually the chief concern, why did the United States show interest in Kony only after the discovery of oil in the region? Not only that, but Kony, as many have made clear, is nowhere to be found in Uganda and is on the run or in hiding somewhere outside of the country.
To top it all off, Yoweri Museveni and his brother, the gun-for-hire Salim Saleh, both have deplorable human rights records, and unlike the LRA, maintain state control over the people of Uganda. An article titled “Uganda’s Tyrant,” written in 2007 by the Guardian, sums up the human rights situation under Museveni:
“President Museveni’s…regime is a constitutional dictatorship, with a rubber stamp parliament, powerless judiciary, censored media and heavily militarised civil institutions…Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International…confirm the harassment of Museveni’s political opponents, detention without trial, torture, extrajudicial killings, suppression of protests and homophobic witch-hunts.”
Abhorrent as his human rights record may be, the United States sent a $45 million military aid package to the Museveni-lead government in July 2011, which included four drones.
Do not be surprised if, months from now, ExxonMobil or another U.S. oil industry superpower walks away with drilling rights in the Lake Albert region and CNOOC, the current main possessor of Uganda’s Lake Albert oil resources, is sent packing.
Also don’t be surprised if Erik Prince and Salim Saleh lead Saracen International, working alongside JSOC troops, who work closely with the Central Intelligence Agency, are working as “security forces” off of the Albertine oil basin.
These are not only likely scenarios, but probable ones. Joseph Kony and his LRA allies might be taken down, but the people of Uganda, on the whole, will not benefit from this “humanitarian intervention.”
Things, unfortunately, will probably only worsen for the people of Uganda as time progresses.
Steve Horn is a researcher and writer for DeSmogBlog. He lives in Madison, WI.
The new faces behind molasses plant.
By John Kamau
The name Antonio Teixeira may not ring any bells in Kenya. But in international circles, the chairman of Energem Resources, which bought a 55 per cent stake in the Odinga family’s Spectre International –sends several alarms.
His entry into Kenya’s business circles is expected to raise eyebrows because of past business links with “mercenary” companies hired to protect mining companies in some of Africa’s bloodiest war zones, The Sunday Standard can exclusively report.
Four years ago, the South African Portuguese, also known as Tony Teixeira, was accused in the British Parliament of gun-running for Angola’s Unita rebels and for defying United Nations sanctions by supplying oil to the rebel movement.
Now questions are being raised about the controversial man behind a Canadian company that purchased the troubled Kisumu molasses plant from the Oginga Odinga family.
Teixeira has been linked to Branch Energy and Executive Outcomes, two notorious private security-cum-paramilitary companies with a record of involvement in war wealth.
Branch Energy, which had mining concessions in Sierra Leone, is 100 per cent owned by Teixeira’s Energem, is one of the pioneers in the provision of private security in return for mining concessions in war-torn nations. Executive Outcomes, on the other hand, was founded by a former Teixeira ally, Tony Buckingham, who recently sat on the board of Energem Resources.
Buckingham, a former South African soldier, was a member of the dreaded South African apartheid-era assassination squad, the 32nd Battalion, and was also behind the British mercenary company, Sandline, which in 1999 broke a UN arms embargo in Sierra Leone, allegedly with the backing of the British government.
Sandline, however, closed shop in April, this year, citing failure to get British support for its private military activities.
According to an Energem company profile obtained by the Sunday Standard, Teixeira’s newly registered company, Energem Kenya Limited, is licensed to “import refined oil products” and “bitumen for the Ministry of Roads”, headed by Raila Odinga. It is the award of an exclusive contract to a company associated with the Odinga family by a ministry headed by a member of the same Odinga family that sparked the row over the acquisition of the Kisumu molasses plant last week.
But Teixeira is not new to controversy.
Last year, another of Teixeira’s companies, Trans Sahara Trading (TST), was stopped from supplying oil to Zambia by President Levy Mwanawasa, who cited “irregularities” in the award of the tender.
And now, Teixeira’s ownership of the Kisumu molasses plant has thrust him to the centre of another dispute only eight months after he announced that his company had acquired a controlling stake in the moribund ethanol plant.
Bondo MP Dr Oburu Odinga, who is also the chairman of East African Spectre, which partly owned Spectre International, says the family has “no interest” in the ethanol maker after pulling out last November. ***WE KNOW THAT THIS IS A LIE BECAUSE TODAY THE ODINGAS OWN THE ETHANOL PLANT (KISUMU MOLASSES PLANT!)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!****
The current storm was kicked up by newly appointed Urban Development assistant minister Maina Kamanda, who accused the Odinga family of “grabbing” the land occupied by the plant, “failing to pay for it” and later selling it to Canadians.
Official documents now indicate that the land in question was offered to Spectre International by the then Commissioner of Lands, Mr S.K Mwaita, in a letter dated January 11, 2001.
The value of the entire land measuring 112 hectares was put at Sh3,699,750.
Twenty-three months later, Teixeira’s DiamondWorks, renamed Energem, acquired a controlling stake in Spectre International and paid $2 million (Sh160 million) for a stake in the Odinga family-owned enterprise.
But the molasses saga deepened further after the Ministry of Lands and Housing issued a brief this week saying there “is no record of official valuation of the property by the chief government valuer”.
Although the molasses plant was supposed to have been auctioned, the ministry’s brief raised questions on the transaction: “What appears to have been processed for sale is empty land and there is no record of how the physical infrastructure investment on the stalled project (was) sold and for how much.”
“The land deal was a direct allocation to Spectre International and there is no indication of other offers being sourced in the absence of official valuation”.
Dr Oburu Odinga who sits on the board of Spectre International with his sister, Ruth, has denied any impropriety on the family’s part.
With the matter now being investigated by a Cabinet committee, Kenyans have not heard the last of the matter.
It seems curious that the offer of the molasses plant land was made to Spectre International some five days after the Raila’s National Development Party (NDP) entered into a partnership with then ruling party, Kanu.
Although Oburu denied that the Odinga family owns the molasses plant, he conceded that two family members sit on the board of Spectre International.***THE THIEF LIES AGAIN!
Texeira entered Kenya’s business world through one of his subsidiary companies, Petroplus Africa Limited, which concluded a memorandum of understanding with the National Oil Company of Kenya (NOCK) and a separate “hospitality agreement” with the state corporation, Kenya Petroleum Refining Ltd, Kenya Pipeline Company and NOCK’s Nairobi Terminal. ****These corrupt a-holes should explain oil/petrol problems/shortages to wananchi!
“These arrangements were entered into for purposes of enabling Petroplus’s entry into the Kenyan market and to facilitate its ability to undertake a review of the mid-stream oil industry in Kenya aimed at its modernisation and development,” the company said in a statement in November last year.
Under the auspices of NOCK, Petroplus imported two trial shipments of oil products in April and May and was awarded its own oil importation and trading licence for Kenya in June 2003.
“The test results were positive and supported the decision by DiamondWorks (now Energem Resources) to acquire control through Spectre of the Kisumu ethanol plant,” the company said.
That entry, we have established, came after another of Energem’s subsidiaries faced problems in the Zambian market where Teixeira reported “difficult trading conditions” in a statement he issued to shareholders in October last year.
Although Teixeira’s name has not featured in Kenya, the allegations of gun-running made in Britain that his operations in Angola, Sierra Leone and Liberia made a fortune out of blood diamonds is bound raise a lot of heat. *** these are Raila/The Odingas business partners****
In its company profile, Energem Resources says it is “supplying bitumen and other products to the Roads and Energy ministries”, an issue that could generate political heat in Kenya.
Texeira came to the board of DiamondWorks, now known as Energem Resources, in January 2000 when his Isle-of-Man registered company, Lyndhurst Limited, advanced $5 million to the ailing DiamondWorks. The loan was converted into shares.
But the company appears to have run into trouble with Canada’s Ontario Securities Commission, which stopped the board from sitting in April 2002 and accused its members of “failing to file financial statements” and to “disclose” the affairs of DiamondWorks.
The company immediately changed its name to Energem Resources.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
GENOCIDE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
http://radiokatwenews.blogspot.com/2006/03/genocide-in-comparative-perspective.html
THE JEWISH AND ACHOLI EXPERIENCE.
The debate between General David Tinyefunza and Olara Otunnu on whether genocide is unfolding in northern Uganda or not, deserves to be subjected to historical comparison for better understanding. Otunnu’s charge that conditions of genocide exist in northern Uganda drew evidence from the Government of Uganda and Non-Governmental Organizations reports that catalogued, among others, the deliberate policy of demonization, forcing people into concentration camps, abetting and encouraging rape by HIV/AIDS infected soldiers, and the prolongation of the conflict. The dynamics of the conflict has led to targeting unarmed civilians by both the Lord Resistance Army (LRA) and the Uganda People’s Defense Force (UPDF). These conditions, taken as a whole, Otunnu argues, meet the threshold of genocide.
General David Tinyefunza of the UPDF denies perpetrating genocide against the Acholi people, without disputing the core sources of evidence presented by Otunnu. He argues that what exists in northern Uganda is not genocide but death caused by a situation of war. He adds that President Museveni has neither the will nor the desire to exterminate the Acholi, but protect them in the so-called “protected villages.”
What is clear from the debate is that both Otunnu and Tinyefunza agree that there is mass death in Acholiland. However, they differ in their explanation about the mechanics of mass deaths, and whether the mass deaths should be characterized as genocide or collateral death. For a nuance understanding, a historical comparison of the mechanics of mass death is necessary. I would like to compare the case of the Jews during the Third Reich (Germany) under Adolf Hitler with that of the Acholi in Uganda under General Yoweri Museveni.
Leadership and Genocide: Hitler and Museveni
The path to consolidation of political and state power by Hitler and General Museveni are similar: First, both leaders began with creating environments where genocide would be seen as justifiable. Museveni ran a one-party state, where he and his associates conceived and meticulously planned genocide in broad daylight. Similarly, Hitler ran Germany as a one-party state. Both leaders excoriated democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law, preferring bellicose militarism.
Second, both leaders demonized their victims and proceeded to whip xenophobia and the fury of the population, initially as means to prosecute a war and eventually as a final solution in itself.
For Hitler in Germany, the progressive conversion of Jews into enemies was later formalized by an executive decree in 1933, which pointed out that there was a Jewish problem. This graduated to the Nazi slogan that Jews were a misfortune.
In Uganda, Museveni’s coming to power was based on explaining national crises as caused by northerners, who came to be mostly identified with the Acholi population. This was formalized by the NRM/A intellectuals that there was a northern question; and the derogatory NRM/A slogan became Acholis are “Abanyanyas” [read as equivalent to the Nazis’ justification – Jews were a misfortune]. The “Abanyanyas” referred to non-citizens, in fact, to southern Sudanese.
In both instances, the leaderships denationalized and transformed victims into enemies of the state deserving neither mercy nor reason. The logical solution was the so-called final solution.
Constructing and Articulating the Intellectual basis of Genocide
For genocide to occur with the apparent connivance of the population, an intellectual basis needs to be created and masqueraded as critical research. This is often used to brainwash the gullible.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler vented out his hatred and xenophobia against the Jews by blaming the Jews for the humiliation that Germany suffered during World War I. Once Jews had been presented as the source of the problem in Germany, the extermination project could be justified as the final solution. But it was not only Hitler; the Nazi intellectuals also legitimated the extermination project against the Jews. They misrepresented the deaths by blaming the victims as responsible for their own destruction.
In the case of Uganda, to understand the background to the tragedy in Acholiland, we need to examine Museveni’s activities during his youthful days in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.
While a student at the University of Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, Museveni wrote his thesis entitled, “Fanon’s Theory and its Verification in Liberated Areas in Mozambique”, where he stated that:
“to transform a human being into an efficient, uncostly and completely subservient slaves, you have, as a pre-condition, to completely purge him of his humanity, manhood and will. Otherwise, as long as he has some hope for a better free future, he will never succumb to enslavement. To become an efficient instrument of oppression, you have to radically dehumanize yourself by foregoing many qualities that are normally found in balanced human beings. You purge yourself of compassion, altruism, consideration for other people’s sufferings and the capacity to restrain your greed. Failure of the oppressor to get rid of such undesirable feelings – like compassion – will mean inability to be a successful exploiter.”
Museveni followed his thesis by remarking that “Hitler was a smart man. …What he did in Germany, we will also do it here” (Uganda). To reinforce his admiration for mass murderers, Museveni boastfully approved the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, in spite of the fact that about 50 million Africans were killed. During interview with Atlantic Monthly, Museveni said, “I do not blame white people for slave trading. If you are stupid, you should be enslaved.” Blaming the victims of this form of genocide for their own extermination is the most pitiful and bigoted utterance. Yet no outrage was registered at home and abroad.
In his book, Sowing the Mustard Seed, Museveni presented the Acholi, as a group, as responsible for the atrocities committed in Luwero. But let us consider the facts: the report of the commission of inquiry into the Luwero deaths have never been made public. Former fighters with Museveni have pointed a finger at Museveni for the Luwero deaths in their articles to the Monitor newspaper. Museveni promptly reacted by issuing injunction against retired National Resistance Movement/Army (NRM/A) military officers from continuing to publish the Luwero war memories. Museveni’s fear is that his complicity for deaths in Luwero will be exposed.
Demonizing the victims: the Acholi and the Jewish Experience
There are similarities between the two leaders in favouring and promoting hatred that would lead to the crimes of genocide.
Killings that lead to the crimes of genocide are usually preceded by psychological preparations. Museveni effected it through a vilification of the Acholi, as a group, by presenting them as responsible for the atrocities in Luwero. This provided justifications for “revenge” killings of the Acholi by the predominantly southern NRM/A soldiers. To continue stoking the flame of hatred and xenophobia against the Acholi, as a group, Museveni skillfully resorted to the indignity of displaying, for partisan reasons, human remains and rattling human skeletons as a political campaign ploy.
The various derogatory remarks about the Acholi people made by Museveni and his associates were interspersed by dehumanizing references of the Acholi people as inferior, primitive, backward and savage. In 1986, the NRM/A political commissar, Commander Karusoke Kajabago, referred to the Acholi people as biological substances, implying that they were deserving of extermination.
The domestic internalization of the demonic ideology consigned the Acholi people to enemy status, within their own country, upon whom acts of debasement and genocide are acceptable. Thus, what is aroused in the population is not so much hatred, although hatred is part of it, but indifference.
The Strategy of Genocide: Implementation and Ruses
[a]. Concentration Camps:
If we examine the phenomenon of concentration camps, we find that it is characteristic of most genocide. First, the concentration camps were created through a great deal of ruses and deception throughout Germany and Uganda.
The infamous concentration camps in Treblinka and Auschwitz were presented by the Nazis’ as industrial centers rather than what they really were. To effect the deception, the gate of Auschwitz still bears the infamous inscription, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work Brings Freedom). Although some Jewish victims might have thought that the violence was part of Hitler’s repressive measures, they had no idea what Treblinka and Auschwitz, among others, signified for them.
The extreme success of German propaganda was evident from the German murderers themselves who witnessed that, “down to their final moment before liquidation, they (Jews) believed they were going to be transported to some other place.”
Museveni’s ruse in moving the Acholi population into concentration is similar to the Nazis. Initially, the unarmed civilian populations were encouraged to run for sanctuary to UPDF detaches, to churches and to police stations during UPDF and LRA firefights, but they would return to their homes after the hostilities. But soon, the UPDF innovators and architect of the final solution saw this as a strategic blessing. The Acholis were to move into the concentration camps for protection from combat hostilities.
When the Acholi’s realized that those camps were death camps, they resisted and stayed in their homes. A victim cried, “we were told that these camps were for our protection, but we are brought here to be killed.” The UPDF made mandatory that the unarmed civilian population must relocate permanently to designated concentration camps and those refusing would be deemed LRA sympathizers. Within 48 hours, the UPDF air force strafed those unarmed civilians who were reluctant to move, militia groups killed whoever remained to collect food and property, villages were burnt and artillery units fired live shells indiscriminately into unarmed civilian communities.
[b]. Some Deceptive Linguistics of Genocide: “Work” and “Protection”
The language used by the Nazis and the UPDF are comparable and similar. The Nazi concentration camps were mostly referred to as “work camps” and never as death camps, which was what the camps were in practice.
The UPDF spoke of the concentration camps as “protection villages” and never as death camps, even when the reports of the Government of Uganda such as Suffering in Silence (January 2005); Health and Mortality Survey Among Displaced Persons in Gulu, Kitgum and Pader Districts, Northern Uganda (July 2005), and Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports describe conditions, which evidently meet the threshold of genocide.
Who is fooling who here?
The Nazi’s fooled nobody but themselves because, after the war, they were brought before the Nuremberg Tribunal and convicted. One of the problems in Germany was that most Germans were in a state of denial as illustrated by their attitude of silence and indifference. The UPDF are also fooling themselves. General Tinyefunza confirmed that only 15 soldiers are posted to protect a population of over 50,000 concentration camp inmates from the LRA attacks. Whereas, he agreed that Museveni, an individual, is protected by over 12,000 soldiers (1 Division of troops), consuming over one-third of the national military budget. Clearly, the concentration camps are not meant to provide protection.
We must be clear that the UPDF language of offering “protection” in villages and the Nazi language of “work camps” are similar. They are effective veil to cover the unfolding genocide.
[c]. Denials and Maligning of Victims
In both Germany and Uganda, propaganda played a central role in shaping the course of genocide.
The Nazi propaganda purported that the Jewish people killed themselves while the Nazis were mere onlookers.
This is similar to Yoweri Museveni propaganda that the Acholi’s are killing themselves while the NRM/A are offering protection and safety.
Preposterous as Hitler and Museveni’s allegations are, the main purposes of the denials and maligning were to blame the victims for their extermination. This shifted the guilt onto cousins or kin and kinship of the exterminated.
The Donor Community and Accountability
There have not been any clear pronouncements about the tragic human catastrophe in northern Uganda from foreign donors, who finance up to 52 percent of Museveni’s administration budget. The donors have procured arms, trained and equipped the UPDF and the police force and continuously provided positive propaganda. It is this complicity that has made the donor community overlook the unfolding genocide in northern Uganda.
We should all be ashamed about our failure or, even connivance with, the perpetrators of genocide by giving material and moral support. Many western donor diplomatic missions have regularly visited the concentration camps, signed the visitor’s book, but made no public complains against the unfolding genocide.
The silence and support by western donor community for Museveni’s regime must be construed as giving tacit accent to continue perpetrating the unfolding genocide against the Acholi people.
How come that the tragic humanitarian suffering in Darfur that is nonetheless less severe in intensity and magnitude, than the situation in Acholi, which Jan Egeland, the United Nations Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA), described as the world’s worse and forgotten humanitarian catastrophe been denied the status of genocide? How come that the tragedy does not also capture the sympathy and attention of the donor community?
The Acholi genocide remains unparallel in terms of the ferocity sustained over time by several participating perpetrators and by the complicity of the donor countries.
This is genocide where the ideological matrix of denial is among the most developed of any genocide in Africa; and, is actively propagated by donor community and agencies.
This is genocide where deniers such as General David Tinyefunza, Herbert Ogwal, Ambrose Murunga and Kintu Nyago, have called it “war” and often resorted to personal attacks, which are unrelated and distracting to what Otunnu actually charged.
This is genocide occurring in broad daylight in spite of copious indicators: the Government of Uganda official reports, Non-Governmental Organizations, Humanitarian and Human Rights Agencies reports documenting atrocities, Museveni’s published philosophical justifications of mass murders and systematic demonizations of the Acholi people, and explicit dehumanization by NRM/A political commissars, meeting the threshold of genocide.
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