The Rise of the Female Foreign Minister

[craner]

DRC! I see, fine. Your opinion on those refugee camps packed with interahamwe, being? The UN, disgracefully, has spent more time effectively defending these genocidal militias amock along the DRC/Rwanda border than in helping Paul Kagame stabilise post-genocide Rwanda. RPF incursions and intervention is small in comparison to the meddling (and sometime invasions) by Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Chad, Libya, Sudan, though I suspect you have less to say about that.

By the way, the UK government is the largest donor to Kagame's goverment, a result of a campaign started and finished by Oona King, and I think it's the best thing she ever did in office.

 

[luka]

[luka - this isn't on, I'm afraid - John Eden]

 

[craner]

It's a slippery slope.

 

[luka]

hahahahha

 

[waffle]

The French Imperialist line, no less.

As previously quoted, "The French surreptitiously backed the extremists carrying out the genocide through its Operation Turquoise."

So colonized by Anglo-American imperialist dogma, you've lost the ability to even comprehend simple sentences. Your loopy logic is equivalent to " 'Mussolini collaborated in Nazi atrocities' = The Italian Imperialist line."

Although maybe I'm wrong; been following this line of Rwanda revisionism for a while now. Tell-tale signs always being the hytserical branding of Paul Kagame as a "dictator" and "war criminal"

In the same way as Saddam Hussein was in the 1980s a US/UK-supported dictator and war criminal: a puppet of Western imperialist interests (and their war criminals).

For example: this rum slice penned by Ed Herman in Z Magazine last October ...

Herman's report is largely accurate.

By the way, the UK government is the largest donor to Kagame's goverment, a result of a campaign started and finished by Oona King, and I think it's the best thing she ever did in office.

Yes, it has been the largest donor to Rwanda for over a decade, actively funding the genocide and slaughter, as with the French and the Americans. Yes, you're proud that King supports such war crimes, all for the sake of enriching some British coltan-importing companies.

The Rwandan ruling class, whose political expression is the Rwandan Patriotic Front, now simply depends upon the mineral resources of the Congo, as it lives well above the means that its own country's resources could provide. The exploitation of Congolese resources is built into government policy and is directed by a component of their External Security Organization. There was no way they were going to accept being deprived of leverage in the Congo, and this was the main cause of the war that then erupted in 1998. Kabila successfully galvanised substantial layers of the population against his former allies, but his rhetoric verged on genocidal as he called on them to "erase the enemy", lest they "become slaves to these little Tutsis". The US, for its part, backed the alliance of Rwanda, Uganda, and the Banyamulenge in order to get a new regime more aligned to its own priorities, with the justification being that the Banyamulenge were merely engaged in a legitimate revolt, while Rwanda and Uganda were intervening to protect the security of their own borders. (A subsidiary justification was that sponsoring Rwanda and Uganda would help contain the Sudanese state). In fact, Rwandan and Ugandan forces had plotted the overthrow of Kabila and directed the first rebellions in Goma and Kinshasa that marked the beginning of the war, and they were decisive in founding the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie (RCD), which unites a disparate array of forces around an inchoate programme. Even the leftist elements that split from the alliance in 1999 to form the Rassemblement congolais pour la democratie - Mouvement de liberation (RCD-ML) were rapidly subordinated to the designs of Uganda's Museveni and extortion by the Ugandan People's Defense Forces (UPDF). What was a straightforward act of aggression by regional powers backed by the world's superpower, overwhelmingly targeting the civilian population, was to be sold as an obscure civil war.

Zimbabwe, which had backed Kabila's revolt with millions of dollars and weapons (themselves probably supplied by the UK before an incoming Blair government fell out with Mugabe), did not join the Rwandan-led alliance. Georges Nzongola-Natalaja argues that the Zimbabwean elite saw the Congo as an "attractive market for Zimbabwean goods and services" and was "determined to make good on its investment", which has resulted in land concessions and joint mining deals between the associates of Mugabe and Kabila. By August 2000, it had spent $200m on the Congo war, supporting Kabila's forces, and this was sufficient to get ZANU-PF in on the diamond-exporting business just as the 'international community' was turning against Mugabe and applying sanctions. Predictably, those sanctions were partially justified by Mugabe's involvement in the Congelese war, despite the fact that the US, the UK, the IMF and other global powers strongly supported Rwanda and Uganda during their worst phases of plunder. The biggest global donor to Rwanda and Uganda in the late 1990s was the UK, which abstained from criticising the two regimes despite their atrocities (sometimes genocidal in the case of the RPF), even as it launched intense rounds of invective against Mugabe.

 

[Mr. Tea]

In the same way as Saddam Hussein was in the 1980s a US/UK-supported dictator and war criminal: a puppet of Western imperialist interests (and their war criminals).

Utter crap. Say what you like about Saddam, but he was no-one's puppet. There's a good case to be made for the argument that he manipulating foreign leaders to a far greater extent than they ever manipulated him. If you still want to insist that "bought arms from" is synonymous with "was a puppet of", then Saddam was a Soviet/Russian puppet, not a 'Western' one. But don't let that get in the way of your blind hatred of all things 'Western'...

 

[waffle]

Utter crap. Say what you like about Saddam, but he was no-one's puppet. There's a good case to be made for the argument that he manipulated foreign leaders to a much greater extent than they ever manipulated him. If you still want to insist that "bought arms from" is synonymous with "was a puppet of", then Saddam was a Soviet/Russian puppet, not a 'Western' one. But don't let that get in the way of your blind hatred of all things 'Western'...

I wonder why a "Soviet/Russian" puppet would murder 5,000 suspected communists in Iraq after the CIA kindly supplied him with their names.

In 1963, Saddam Hussein worked with the CIA to carry out the coup by the Baath party, which eventually brought him to power in Iraq. The book, A Brutal Friendship: The West and the Arab Elite by Said K. Aburish, which was reviewed recently in Counterpunch (The CIA: Lest We Forget, CounterPunch. Sept.16-30 1997, p.2), describes how the CIA, Saddam and other members of the Baath party collaborated to bring about the coup, murdering perhaps 5,000 people in the process. The United States went on to help Saddam win the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. According to Noam Chomsky, There were no passionate calls for a military strike after Saddam's gassing of Kurds at Halabja in March, 1988; on the contrary, the US and U.K. extended their strong support for the mass murderer, then, also 'our kind of guy' (Iraq and the UN Sanctions, The Economist, Nov.19 1994, p.47)

1963: U.S. supports coup by Iraqi Ba'ath party (soon to be headed by Saddam Hussein) and reportedly gives them names of communists to murder, which they do with vigor.

Andrew Cockburn and Patrick Cockburn, Out of the Ashes: The Resurrection of Saddam Hussein, New York: Harperperennial. 1999, p. 74; Edith and E. F. Penrose, Iraq: International Relations and National Development, Boulder: Westview, 1978, p. 288; Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978, pp. 985-86 . ​

Regime Change: How the CIA put Saddam's Party in Power

 

[vimothy]

Said K. Aburish also sold arms to Iraq.

 

[scottdisco]

just to follow up something Vim said, there's always

57 per cent of arms deliveries to Iraq between 1973 and 2002 came from the Soviet Union, 13 per cent from France, 12 per cent from China, 0.5 per cent from the US and 0.2 per cent from Britain.

(source.)

that somewhat undercuts Waffle's

In the same way as Saddam Hussein was in the 1980s a US/UK-supported dictator and war criminal: a puppet of Western imperialist interests (and their war criminals).

(which was in response to Craner on Rwanda.)
if you're going to mention certain states having a horse in the race, let's be clear-eyed and flag up all the guilty parties, not just one's own least favourite governments.

i haven't been posting for a couple of years until recently and don't know much of the history of Waffle/Padraig, and am aware this looks like i'm kicking him whilst he's down (i know i am posting in response to him and he can't respond, which is unfair); about the only time i've directly responded to him in recent weeks was an off-topic remark i made on the Somali pirates thread, about prior US interventions there.

he didn't respond to me but the tone of what i was saying would have been well received by him, i think, given it was a Richard Dowden quote about Blackhawk Down.
(FWIW, i thought what Zhao said to Waffle on the derailed 'neo-nazi forum hacked' thread was shot through with humane sympathy, and was very admirable.)

p.s.
is there a Rwandan genocide/Second Congo War/Great Lakes etc. thread?

 

[Mr. Tea]

I wonder why a "Soviet/Russian" puppet would murder 5,000 suspected communists in Iraq after the CIA kindly supplied him with their names

Ooh, maybe because he just felt like murdering them? Genocidal tyrants are quite well known for that, don't you know.

Shame, I've not been on over the weekend and it seems I've missed Padraig's latest banning.

 

[craner]

p.s.
is there a Rwandan genocide/Second Congo War/Great Lakes etc. thread?

There isn't, but it would be a good one, I think. I'd be happy to contribute to it, but I don't really know how to start it. Maybe you could, Scott? Or Sufi, who knows a shitload about this and once sent me an amazing report on the first, short-lived Kabila "regime" which is the best thing I've yet read about it.

It would be a difficult thread, but a worthwhile one - the whole Rwanda, Burundi, DRC, etc., debate is so convoluted, and demands rigorous interest, and, really, expertise, to debate properly.

But I've been saying for years now that DRC is the context for everything else that happens -it is the World's Black Hole. The sheer scale and intricacy and destructive power of this war dwarfs it all, and we don't hear or read enough about it.

It's like Chechnya in that regard.

 

[nomadthethird]

Utter crap. Say what you like about Saddam, but he was no-one's puppet. There's a good case to be made for the argument that he manipulated foreign leaders to a much greater extent than they ever manipulated him. If you still want to insist that "bought arms from" is synonymous with "was a puppet of", then Saddam was a Soviet/Russian puppet, not a 'Western' one. But don't let that get in the way of your blind hatred of all things 'Western'...

Is this a joke?

I suppose I can't be sure. I've been sure people were serious on here before when they claimed they weren't later...

Hey Mr. Tea, have you ever read about how America trained Saddam's minions to fight the Russians?

It's common knowlege over here really...I don't follow Rwanda and I probably should, but I have a hard time believing the U.S. is above board on this any more than it has been on Iraq/Iran/Saudi Arabia for the last 30 years at least.

 

[nomadthethird]

Anybody ever heard of CIA director Richard Helms?

Just curious.

 

[scottdisco]

i've not heard of Helms.
but everything i know about the CIA i gleaned from 'Burn After Reading'..

Under the Jimmy Carter administration, Codevilla adds, the CIA collaborated in effect with its Soviet counterparts to bring down the Shah of Iran. "By 1978," he writes, "Saddam's secret services were contributing logistics, cash and Shi'ite agents to the coalition that destroyed the Shah. Although the Ayatollah Khomeini was indispensable to it, so were Soviet line organizations. Notably, Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization provided the bulk of the street fighters. The radio of the Islamic revolution was run by the KGB out of Soviet Baku."

(source.)

i must concur with Mr Tea in the thrust that one can believe, plausibly imo, Hussein manipulated world leaders far more than they ever played him: meets with Douglas Hurd and Jacques Chirac (i was fascinated by the New Internationalist article Vimothy posted up-page) and Donald Rumsfeld are all well and good, and the bottom line is although these relations were a two-way street, the dictator had plenty of folk eating out of the palm of his hands in the 80's

BTW i hope it doesn't read above like i am airy and unconcerned re always-relevant questions of disgraceful support for a vicious dictatorship, from various democracies.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Is this a joke?

I suppose I can't be sure. I've been sure people were serious on here before when they claimed they weren't later...

Hey Mr. Tea, have you ever read about how America trained Saddam's minions to fight the Russians?

It's common knowlege over here really...I don't follow Rwanda and I probably should, but I have a hard time believing the U.S. is above board on this any more than it has been on Iraq/Iran/Saudi Arabia for the last 30 years at least.

Does that, in itself, make Saddam a US 'puppet'? Or does it just further make my point about what an expert manipulator he was, playing the superpowers off against each other?

 

[jambo]

Is this a joke?

I suppose I can't be sure. I've been sure people were serious on here before when they claimed they weren't later...

Perhaps you refer to those occasions when you have misconstrued the tone of people's posts?

It's one thing for a little gentle humour or sarcasm to be misread but it's another when subsequent explanations are repeatedly discounted.

 

[craner]

Full of twists and turns, this one.

 

[nomadthethird]

Perhaps you refer to those occasions when you have misconstrued the tone of people's posts?

It's one thing for a little gentle humour or sarcasm to be misread but it's another when subsequent explanations are repeatedly discounted.

Yes, Jambo, that is "perhaps" what I was referring to there. Or it was *explicitly* what I was referring to...

 

[craner]

bump!

 

[craner]

Where is Jambo?