Posted on 06/10/2004 12:39:19 PM PDT by propertius
Hmm. Afraid that would play right into the hand of the aggressor -- Rwanda. The Rwandan government is basically hoping for just such a secessionist plan in the Kivus, the region of eastern Congo it illegally occupied for five years. Basically Rwanda is a small, overcrowded country with no natural resources. It has this giant neighbour next door with unimaginable mineral riches. So it invaded. Rwandan troops killed several hundred thousand there and bare the primary culpability for the deaths of millions more.
Paul Kagame's regime in Rwanda is as ugly as Robert Mugabe. He is a dictator who has persecuted and oppressed his own people, Hutus and Tutsis alike and enriched his own ruling clique (none of whom were in Rwanda during the genocide) to the detriment of his people. His economy survives on masses of donor aid given by Western governments who feel guilty about looking on during the genocide. In their naivety, those same governments will be complicit in a new genocide in Rwanda a few years down the line, and in the continued deaths of millions in Congo.
Most of this Western idiocy was led by Britain's former development secretary Clare Short (who stabbed blair in the back over Iraq and is the most irresponsible cabinet minister we have ever had in britain).
"Clare Short is responsible for the deaths of more people than any British cabinet minister since Harold Macmillan sent eastern Europeans back to the Soviet block in the 1950s" is the verdict of one American diplomat I have chatted with over here.
I would suggest two things for starters: Immediate smart sanctions on the Rwandan heirarchy, especially on people like Kagame and Army Chief of Staff James Kaberebe. Sanctions also on Ugandan govt officials and on Tanzanian Foreign Minister Jakaya Kikwete involved in supplying arms and stealing from the country.
Punishment of governments like the Canadian, Belgian, French and Russian administrations that have given tacit backing to unscrupulous Western companies who are plundering as well, and arming rebels to create the conditions conducive to their crimes.
The whole crisis in Zimbabwe stems from this too. Mugabe started to appropriate white farms to distract the population from the financial ruin of his invasion of Congo, which cost 7 million US dollars a day but enriched himself, his family and close cronies like Speaker Manangagwa and white Vichy collaborators and criminals like Billy Rautenbach and Jean-Paul Bredenkamp.
As for Congo itself, you will still always have problems. Like much of Africa it is ethnically divided and totally unprepared for independence, which should never have come until the late 1980s after a sensible transition and training period...
Really, how fascinating. Would love to hear of some of your experiences at the time and waht people were saying of Thsombe, Lumumba et al. Did you ever see the film The Wild Geese, starring Richard Burton, Roger Moore and Richard Harris as white mercenaries, loosely based on the Katanga War of secession?
Thanks! It's always good to get the facts from the folks who really know it. But you've not anwered what you think would be the way to solve the near-continuous fighting between all the tribes, but then that is an African thing not only limited to the Congo.
A sullen people, half-devil and half-child... Kipling's words may nauseate many right-thinking people today, but did he have a point?
The White Man's Burden
By Rudyard Kipling
Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go, bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait, in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the White Man's burden--
In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain,
To seek another's profit
And work another's gain.
Take up the White Man's burden--
The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine,
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
(The end for others sought)
Watch sloth and heathen folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the White Man's burden--
No iron rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go, make them with your living
And mark them with your dead.
Take up the White Man's burden,
And reap his old reward--
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"
Take up the White Man's burden--
Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloak your weariness.
By all ye will or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent sullen peoples
Shall weigh your God and you.
Take up the White Man's burden!
Have done with childish days--
The lightly-proffered laurel,
The easy ungrudged praise:
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers.
Absolutely. But they have to be taught it, don't they? And so far, not many want to learn.
The other question is whether we in the West have the moral rectitude anymore to be the teachers... That is a very debateable point.
Those were truly strange days!
The Congo became independant in June and by July it was utter chaos. Murder and mayhem were the order of the day. The Belgians sent in paratroopers to rescue Belgian citizens, and we hauled in food for the starving victims of Lumumba and Tashombe. We evacuated the few remaining Belgian officers who were still alive.
The UN sided with Lumumba and attacked Katanga three times. Mercenaries were everywhere, and the Russians were supplying weapons to any gang that wanted them.
None of us ever new what the hell was going on, and considered all sides the enemy. The Italians even got involved, but they got barbecued...Literally.
Katanga could have been the gem of Africa, but everyone was too busy killing each other to get it together. Much of the strife was fueled by European business rivalries.
I'm glad you mentioned the movie. I'll have to see it. Those were days of high adventure and big bucks for mercenary types!
To make a long story short, the UN bungled the job!
European Business rivalries still fuelling the conflict there.
"Mad" Mike Hoare, who led the mercenaries, was technical director on the movie. Did you ever come across him. Guess not; Or, of course, Che Guevara who was fighting on the other side with Laurent Kabila. Guevar's African Dream is worth a read, if only to show what a venal, drunken, bumbling idiot Kabila was. It was prophetic in many ways as Kabila clearly hadn't changed when he eventually became president. I was in Katanga last year, in Kalemie on the shores of Lake Tanganyika. Did you get down there at all or were you flying out of Elizabethville (Lumbumbashi)?
Thanks for the fascinating info. Would love to hear more some day -- I have a plan to write a book on Congo, once I have finished the one on Kenya I am doing now.
sorry for remiss reply-not a nice place but very much in need of medical help----much evidence of war still remains and 3 days after i left 250 civilians were killed in a SPLA-GOVERMENT clash in a village 30 miles away--as you know ,KAPOETA was OSAMA BIN LADEN'S old training grounds before he went to AFGHANISTAN---i was with an independent missionary and paid cost out of my pocket
i am impressed with your knowledge-can you safely tell me more about yourself?
Sorry about not getting back to you. Had to take a little R&R in Vegas.
The C-130's were flying out of Elizabethville. We were the last C-119's in operation. We were phased out in '62 and our base in Dreux, France closed.
At the time, we operated out of Nairobi and hauled dried fish into dirt strips all over the countryside. Elizabethville was just a gas stop for us.
I really enjoyed Kenya. I even spent some leave time there and took a camping trip to the great rift. Fantastic!
I'd love to read your book. Not all my memories of Africa are bad. During the Congo runs I was missing my girlfriend back in Paris. She was a dancer at the Red Windmill, and my business partner. I sold Marlboro cigarettes and Johnny Walker scotch on the black market. Those were the days!
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