by GLEN FORD
Uganda threatened to pull out of the dirty war in Somalia unless it was afforded continued immunity for its mass murders in Congo. Washington is the Big Daddy of both bloodbaths. Within days, Uganda backed down, since a “withdrawal from Somalia would amount to going on strike against its employer, the United States.”
On Tuesday, the vast majority of African Americans cast their votes for a man whose hands are soaked in the blood of millions of Congolese. Barack Obama, like his predecessors George Bush and Bill Clinton, has pulled the strings, paid the cash, and sent the weapons that Uganda and Rwanda have used to cause the deaths of six million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo since invading that country in 1996. Various organs of the United Nations have repeatedly found America’s two top allies in Black Africa complicit in the Congo genocide, and on every occasion, the U.S. and Great Britain have protected the mass murderers. And why not? The genocide in Congo is the deliberate result of American and British policy. Uganda and Rwanda are merely henchmen, who commit mass murder in return for a cut of Congo’s vast stores of mineral resources. Western businesses are the ultimate beneficiaries.
The International Court of Justice found Uganda guilty, in 2005, of killing and torturing Congolese civilians and plundering the country’s resources. Congo asked for $10 billion in reparations, but Uganda has paid nothing. Why should it? Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, was Ronald Reagan’s favorite African dictator and has served U.S. African policy, ever since. Uganda does not act on its own, but as a military asset of the United States. The same goes for Rwanda, which has been repeatedly cited for virtually annexing the eastern Congo in close collaboration with Ugandan forces. Rwanda President Paul Kagame acts as a puppet for U.S. policy in Africa, in return for lavish American military and economic aid and free rein to plunder and kill in the Congo.
Rwanda and Uganda are immune from international law because they do Washington’s bidding, sending troops wherever they are needed to buttress U.S. interests in Africa.
Black Agenda Report for more