[Now that Mme Clinton has returned the neocolonial war wing of the Democratic Party to unambiguous command and control, it might be a good time to look at how these sorcieres were never really off-stage--under any administrsation.--mc]
Hecate and Her Weird Sisters
My damn President?
Mad Albright
Hillary
Rice, Susan
Unca Sam
["Double,
double toil and trouble, fire burn and caldron bubble."
Since
Reagan/Bush—and then Clinton, and then Bush, again—emancipated Private Capital
from all effective State controls and any and all Social responsibilities, and
all the duties formerly belonging to the Crown were contracted out in a ‘Free
Market’ where nothing has intrinsic value but all is valorized only in its
exchange, where alleviating Human want ceased to be the impetus for economic
reproduction and Need, itself—expressed as debt, disease and misery—was
commodified and mass-produced, perpetuated and traded on into futures that
would test Azimov's imagination: now the essential outcome of human activity
seems to have become the ever-greater re-production of Waste.
Post-Capitalist
Imperialism, without ever overcoming its malignant instinct for
self-preservation and self-valorization, has introduced an even more lethal
strain of colonialism than that propagated by Lord Kitchener and King Leopold:
the unregenerate extraction of the colonies' resources exchanges the
native wealth for a sere hellscape over which the deeply mutilated victims of
this spoilage are encouraged to wage Malthusian war.
And
it is this plague-version of colonialism, this left-anti-imperialist-resistant
genre of Imperialism—and if Dinesh d'Souza is right in his Fuckumentary
"2016", this is a geostrategy that Barack Obama's very DNA should
oppose—that is being spread throughout Eastern Europe, the Middle East and
North and Central Africa by the same agencies that pretend to be defending
Human Rights and promoting Democracy. Outfits like USAID, NED, Save the
Children, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty, any of the Soros-backed
Open Society groups like the IWPR, ICG, CANVAS, OTPOR, or francophonia's Survie
& Ibuka—right, Western Military Intelligence in dirty dreads and a Sears
poncho—are the vanguard.
So—and
not merely to kill someone's psycho-historical glue-buzz over the Big Black
Bare-Chested Villain Theory of Foreign Evil—on this the 20th anniversary of what
continues—even as forests of evidence and legions of witnesses testify against
its ever happening like that in Kigali--to be described as "The Rwandan
Genocide: In Which 800,000 Tutsis and Moderate Hutus Were Exterminated in
100 Days by Extremist Hutu Under the Direction of the Habyarimana/MRND
Government After First Assassinating their Leader, etc., etc.": It
seems way past high-time that certain names were named and certain games were
shamed.
The
Clintons and their neo-liberal, evangelical storm troopers for Humanity can no
longer be allowed to front that they knew nothing about the horrors that were
taking place at their behest in Central Africa after, say, 1 October 1990, the
date of the Ugandan invasion of Rwanda; or after 6 April 1994 when a double
presidential assassination brought less international attention than the JFK,
Jr., assassination.
That
the four women pictured above are all deeply involved in bringing about the
Wasting of decent societies in the Balkans of Central Europe and Les Milles
Collines d'Afrique centrale—that they are WOMEN is nothing more than
coincidence. There is no implication of any sort of 'feminist conspiracy'
here, beyond the usual geostrategic joint criminal enterprise that is claiming
Rape as a war crime. But that these four—and their neo-colonialist coven
within the Democratic Party—continue to wield influence in the formation of
Defense and State Dept. policy—and, in so doing, continue to neutralize and
even corrupt the progressive tendencies that President Obama has demonstrated,
especially domestically, throughout his presidency—is or should be the source
of grave concern.
My friend Charles Onana, whose French works make up
the definitive history of Central and North Africa, gave this interview to the
weekly Marianne
as a signal that his latest book on Rwanda will drop soon. His writing
seems to be purposefully withheld from Anglo-Saxon readers. I've tried in
little ways (like translating this interview) to fill this important lacuna.
But, as the interview will make obvious, the resistance in the US to
knowing the real History of Africa is much stronger than this old man can
break.—mc]
Marianne
Saturday 29 March
2014
Interview with
Charles Onana on Rwanda 20 yrs After
Marianne: Is
it still your view that France never stopped seeking a peaceful, political
solution to the conflict between the RPF and the Habyarimana regime, while the
US was constantly playing both sides off against each other?
Charles Onana: From
the time the RPF attacked Rwanda from its guerilla bases in Uganda, in 1990,
President Mitterrand believed that, whatever the cost, it was necessary to stop
the destabilization of Rwanda and, more broadly, that of the entire Great Lakes
region. In a direct continuation
of policies created by his predecessor Valery Giscard d’Estaing, he
(Mitterrand) decided to support Habyarimana and to adopt the military
cooperation agreements that bound the two countries. The Americans followed a completely separate logic. Habyarimana was allied with Mobutu, the
president of Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo [DRC]), a privileged
partner with the US for thirty years because he was considered an effective
bulwark against communism, but had become less useful, and even a burden, in
their eyes. In 1990, the Americans
feigned surprise at the RPF offensive that resulted in thousands of deaths and
tens of thousands of displaced persons.
But in reality, they knew all about it.
And for good reason: Kagame had been trained at the U.S.
Army Command and General Staff College in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, just like
many other RPF officers. The
Pentagon and the CIA knew perfectly well that he would take the route of
insurgency, knew all about and, in fact, supported his project to topple
Habyarimana by force of arms and invade eastern Congo/Zaire. At the time of the RPF attack,
Habyarimana was in the US, where officials had offered him asylum, intending,
certainly, to leave an open field for the RPF. He refused this offer. . . . When he got back to Kigali, Mitterrand pressured him
constantly to negotiate with the RPF, demanded he democratize the country and
put in place a government open to the unarmed opposition. Habyarimana accepted without batting an
eye because of his need for French aid.
From 1990 to 1993, François
Mitterrand, despite his great efforts, was unable to bring about an agreement
between the two parties. On
several occasions he rushed emissaries to urge Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni
to put pressure in this direction on Kagame and his RPF, who were, purely and
simply, active members of his military and government services. Bruno Delaye, a Mitterrand advisor at
the Élysée, and the Minister of Cooperation Marcel Debarge made the trip to
Kampala. Officially, the US and
Great Britain supported these efforts, but, on the down low, they had been
supporting the insurgents since 1988.
Marianne: Does
this include militarily?
CO: Actually, Washington’s
solid support of the Tutsi rebellion was worked out in the second half of the
George H.W. Bush (Poppy) administration.
In 1992, in Orlando, Florida, investigators from the US Customs Service
uncovered significant arms trafficking, including missiles and helicopters,
destined for Uganda and whose kingpin was none other than the Director of
Yoweri Museveni’s Cabinet. But at
this time Uganda was not at war, and the president had eliminated all
opposition from inside his country.
Some of these arms must have been meant for the South Sudanese rebels of
John Garang, at war against the Khartoum government of General Omar al-Bashir
whom the Americans wanted to get rid of, and the rest . . . for Kagame’s RPF.
Marianne: Did
they make it to their destination?
CO: When the US Justice
Dept. found out that this arms business was old and that Museveni was behind
it, the CIA and the Pentagon did all they could to cover it up. And they must have, to a certain
extent, succeeded because the Bush administration wound up releasing, very
officially, a specific aid budget for Uganda, meaning, in reality, for the
Tutsi rebellion. Later, at the
time of the signing of the Arusha Peace Agreement, UN observers would find
large quantities of weapons from “Ugandan stocks” in the hands of the RPF.
Marianne: You
write that, for the Americans, Habyarimana’s chief fault was his close
relationship with Mobutu.
CO: The two men were really
very close, but, I repeat, the US wanted to be rid of Mobutu. The Rwandan ambassador to Washington
told me how, at that time, Herman Cohen, US Under-Secretary of State for African
Affairs, had revealed the destabilization plan they intended to carry out. For that they needed Habyarimana to
grant them passage through Rwandan territory. He never accepted this nor ever really understood that the
offensive against the French “Pré-Carré” or French-speaking Africa was written
into American policy and had already been to a large extent implemented.
Since Clinton’s arrival in the
White House, this policy had intensified, especially under the influence of
then-US Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright and Susan Rice, then on the
staff of the National Security Council (later, Assistant Secretary of State for
African Affairs, and now US National Security Advisor—cm/p)
Marianne: But
didn’t the US support the Arusha Peace Accords between the RPF and the
Habyarimana regime?
CO: Absolutely. But in a very twisted kind of way. I found a document from the State Dept.
addressed to Herman Cohen explicitly describing the pressures he was supposed
to put on Habyarimana, by France’s Paul Dijoud (director of African Affairs for
the Foreign Ministry in 1992) and Belgium’s Willy Claes (then Foreign Affairs
Minister for that country), to accept the entirety of the Arusha Accords. Knowing full well that the terms were
unacceptable to the Hutus.
Marianne: What
was the attitude of the US after the 6th of April 1994?
CO: For the three months
the killings lasted, the Americans didn’t once make a move toward creating any
real peacekeeping operation that might have put an end to them. They had to make sure the French didn’t
introduce a military force into Kigali because the RPF had demanded they get
out of Rwanda. . . . As long as
the French troops remained in Kigali, the RPF would not be able to take power. In June, when the UN asked France to
put together what would become Operation Turquoise, the Americans supported
them formally but not logistically, even though they had promised to furnish
them with air support. Then they
put together their own humanitarian operation, Support Hope, out of Kampala
(the Ugandan capital—ndlr), but by then there was no one left to save in
Rwanda. . . .
The British went right along with
the US creating their own Operation Gabrielle. In reality all these military officials, among whom were
Israelis, took it upon themselves to train a new Rwandan Armed Forces that
would be under the control of the RPF.
Even before the mass killings had
stopped, the US State Dept. insisted that the new authorities be
recognized. And sometime later,
French, which had been the official language of the Rwandan government from
before colonial times was removed from administrative life. . . .
Marianne: Was
Mitterrand aware of the Anglo-Americans’ double-dealing?
CO: Yes, especially because
his Chief of Staff, General Christian Quesnot, perfectly understood the
strategy of the RPF and its supporters in Washington and London. But Mitterrand was already sick and, in
the face of the violent anti-French campaign in the national media, he could not
or did not know how to oppose it.
Marianne: François
Mitterrand, friend and accomplice of the génocidaires. . . . This charge
appeared once again in a recent cartoon promoted by journalist Patrick de
Saint-Exupéry. What do you think
of that?
CO: It’s ridiculous! On a personal, political, or media
level, what interest could this man, whose great intelligence even his enemies
acknowledge, have had in encouraging a genocide? Among his detractors who compare the Rwandan genocide with
The Holocaust—and that makes no sense on a historical level—some are merely
evening scores with him.
Marianne: But
isn’t it a premeditated genocide all the same?
CO: If this were the case,
don’t you think the RPF, the international organizations, those countries
present in one way or another in the region would have sounded the alarm well
before the 6th of April 1994?
But there isn’t any documented evidence of such a phenomenon. And that is why the International
Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has had such difficulty establishing it.
Marianne: The
only expert-report to date, that of judges Marc Trévidic and Nathalie Poux,
assigns responsibility, without naming any of them, to Extremist Hutus for
being the most likely perpetrators of the 6 April attack, coming out of Camp
Kanombé under the control of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), who were faithful
to Habyarimana. . . .
CO: First, the
investigation by these judges is far from being finished. And, in my opinion, it still has
numerous weaknesses. How is it
that, for example, the commander of Camp Kanombé has never given
testimony? He did, however, write
to Judge Trévidic in this regard, just as a Captain in the FAR who had gathered
a great deal of pertinent testimony from among the soldiers of the camp. Likewise for the UN observers present
on the scene or with General Roméo Dallaire, the Commander of the UNAMIR. All of these people could have brought
important information to enrich the investigation.
Marianne: After
four books and years of inquiry, what do you believe?
CO: I
remain persuaded that Kagame and his men are the ones who carried out the
attack. I have already written
that, and he sued me in French court before later withdrawing his
complaint. Strange, huh? The ICTR has done everything it could
to exclude the attack from its investigations. If they had documents and testimony supporting their
conviction that the Hutus were responsible for the attack, don’t you think the
Tribunal would have acted on them?
Interview by Alain Léauthier
