USGovt, Security Council & Peace in the Congo for nytaf@ursula; Fri, 11 Feb 2000 09:01:23 -0500 Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - Horace G Campbell January 18, 2000 The United States Government, the Security Council and the Peace Process in the Congo By Horace G. Campbell , Professor of African American Studies and Political Science, Syracuse University Introduction The month of January is when the CIA supported forces in the Congo handed over Patrice Lumumba for assassination in 1961. While Africa will be commemorating the life of Lumumba, the Security Council of the United Nations will be debating the question of Peace in Africa. When the United States government was spreading destabilization and destruction in Africa the government placed all the necessary resources into the campaigns of destruction and destabilization. Successive Presidents sought to mobilize all government departments, the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the USAID, the OFDA, and Hollywood to ensure that all sections of the society was fully behind the destabilization project. In the case of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the United States supported the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko for over thirty years. After all of this destruction it would be the view of any serious human that the United States bear great responsibility for supporting peace, economic renewal and social reconstruction. Yet, the United States and its government seeks to present to the world a view of the peace process as if the US is bereft of any responsibility In this New Year it is up to the citizens of the USA to demonstrate whether this is the dawn of a new era. Throughout the world the era of apartheid, militarism, patriarchy and genocide is being discredited. The era of peace reconciliation and the health of humanity is seeking space for full germination. This has been the lesson of the South African transition. For there to be peace and an end to warfare in Africa, this is the responsibility of Africans. However peace and the search for peace is not only the responsibility of Africans. Nelson Mandela has demonstrated this concretely by his tireless efforts to assist the peace process in the Middle East. African soldiers have served in Bosnia and in Lebanon. Yet, in the search for peace in Africa it is suddenly an African affair. The Immediate Issue of Peace The agreement to end the war in the DRC called the Lusaka Peace Accords was signed in July of 1999. This Accord laid out the best conditions for cease-fire, disengagement of foreign troops, and the arrest of the genocidaires and the start of a political dialogue in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Indeed there have been violations of the cease-fire by different factions but the major players, especially the non-military parties, have demonstrated the political will to peace. In the first week of January this will was manifest in an agreement between Etienne Tshishkedi of the UPDS party and Wamba Dia Wamba to build on the foundations of the Sovereign National Conference for the acceleration of the process to the National Dialogue in order to put an end to the years of genocide and militarism in Central Africa. The debate on Africa at the Security Council will draw many African Presidents to this session but the United States must take measures to restructure its bureaucracy and its thinking on Africa if this new century is to mark a Turning Point. For Mr. Holbrooke to be taken seriously the US would have to demonstrate that it has moved to restructure the bureaucracy that deals with Africa. The State Department and its organization with respect to Africa will bear this out. At present the State Department is organized not to support the peace, fighting aids and economic reconstruction but to maintain the old, chauvinist and realist positions towards Africa. Compare the structure in place to support peace in Kosovo and the complete absence of structures to support peace in the DRC. In the specific case of the Kosovo, the State Department has a Department that deals exclusively with peace issues called the Kosovo Implementation Office. There is also a Dayton Implementation Office. Both offices have Directors, Foreign Service officers, staff, resources and commitments to work with private sector entrepreneurs who are called Friends of Kosovo. Then outside the government, the State Department interfaces with the Danube Commission. This is a Commission given the task to ensure the smooth clearing of the Danube. In this case, the USA is accepting responsibility for bombing the bridges across this river. Many Africans have drawn attention to the resources used by international agencies for refugees in the Balkans as opposed to refugees in Africa. This is the same for the mobilization of other resources for peace and reconstruction. At the meetings of Friends of Kosovo more than US$ 3.5 billion has been pledged for this part of former Yugoslavia of less than three million. One can compare the human resources of the State Department dealing with this issue and see at once that there is no similar Lusaka Implementation Office to coordinate the work of the peace process. In the State Department there is the Special Envoy, Former Congressperson, Wolpe from Michigan who has a secretary and no staff. There is one Desk Officer in the Africa Bureau of the State Department for the DRC with a population of over fifty million. There is one other desk officer for Rwanda and Burundi. On top of these desk officers there is the Special Envoy in the Africa Bureau, Richard Bogosian. From the actions of this office it can be deduced that the main task of this envoy is to monitor the situation in Burundi to give the US early warning of genocide in Burundi so that there can be a better face saving device than that of Rwanda in 1994. At the core of the lack of resources for peace is the centrality of the Pentagon. This is a war making institution and its planning and strategy papers influence bureaucrats and others so that this war making institution influences and shapes thinking on peace in the Congo and Central Africa. The hang over from the Cold War and the racism of the support for apartheid, Mobutu and Savimbi is such that the Pentagon is in its present make up only capable cover up. Will the Pentagon expose the full extent of its role in propping up Mobutu so that the slate can be wiped clean? Because of the baggage of destruction when the meetings of the State Department are called to deal with peace, the operatives from the CIA, the Pentagon and the Defense Intelligence Agency will have far more to say than elements from the National Economic Council. In addition because the thinking of the Pentagon dominates Washington the interagency meetings of humanitarian entrepreneurs, conflict resolution entrepreneurs, security specialists, strategic thinkers, those watching human rights, academics, information policy centers and web spin-doctors reproduce the maps of war and military positions. Military thinking dominates the bureaucracy and so called humanitarian lobby. This same military thinking is reproduced in the US-UN coordinating office, as was manifest in the formulation of Presidential Decision Directive 25 of 1994. In the case of the Congo, there is no Friends of the Congo that is being mobilized to think in terms of economic reconstruction. The State Department versus Nelson Mandela Under the terms of the Lusaka Accords those who committed genocide in Rwanda are supposed to be arrested and handed to the international tribunal. The genocide in Rwanda, the avalanche of murders and concentration camps in Burundi and the wars in the DRC are all part of the same history of genocide and militarism. Adam Hochschild's book, King Leopold's Ghost has brought out the interconnections of this genocidal history. For this and many other reasons the issue of peace in the DRC cannot be separated from peace in Burundi and the arrest of the Interhamwe and those who committed genocide in Rwanda. Mindful of the interrelationships between these differing forms of insecurity, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) sought and received the support of Nelson Mandela for the peace process in both Burundi and the DRC. Mandela wanted to carry on the work of Julius Nyerere to find a long lasting solution to genocide, warfare and political extremism. Mandela will work with the Arusha initiative to bring all of the parties committed to peace. The isolation of the militarists and hard liners in Burundi will be a slow but necessary process to ensure the supremacy of dialogue over destruction. Mandela has brought his considerable moral stature to the peace process. This has stayed the hand of France who wants the situation to deteriorate in order to continue the figment that French military intervention in Africa is necessary for Europe to live in peace. The USA and the Pentagon never gave support to Nyerere and instead of seeking to give the resources to the Arusha initiative sought to build up the Africa Crisis Response Initiative. After all, the same elements in the Pentagon who were in support of apartheid and military destabilization are the same elements that are the thinkers behind the US military policies in Burundi. These elements are careful not to oppose Nelson Mandela in public but to support the press campaign of demonizing the Nyerere efforts as if to suggest that there are no initiatives within Africa that can bring peace. One can compare the attitude and posture of the US media in the case of the anti-colonial struggle in Ireland and 5the struggles for peace in Africa. Though the good Friday peace accord was signed in April 1998 there was no real movement in the Irish Peace Process for over twenty-two months. The press gave support to the painstaking work of Senator Mitchell. The international media never demonized that process. The opposite is the case in Africa. In this, the old Pentagon and CIA elements have access to the media that is only willing and ready to demonize the "tribal African". It is here that the domestic agenda meets the foreign policy agenda of the Kissinger realists. The State Department has a Special Envoy in the Africa Bureau whose job is devoted to the Burundi tinderbox. Would such a person defer to Nelson Mandela? For the US government to work in coordination with The Nyerere team in Arusha and Nelson Mandela would be to say that the moral leadership of Mandela in Burundi is more important that the military and economic position of the USA in the region of Africa. This is a crucial test for the United States in the new century for it brings the whole realism of Henry Kissinger, Chester Crocker and Madeline Albright to the forefront. Domestic Policies and Foreign Policies The reality is that The Clinton Administration wants to be able to gain the support of a local African American constituency through the National Summit on Africa without any fundamental changes of the Kissinger bureaucracy that was set in place since the Tar Baby option was written in 1969. Then Henry Kissinger predicted that the apartheid elements were there to stay and that the world could ignore Nelson Mandela. The Kissinger position was wrong in 1969 just as the Albright position on peace in the Congo is wrong in 2000. For the US government to be taken seriously at the United Nations the following would be the minimum requirements: 1. The establishment of a Lusaka Implementation Office to support the Lusaka Peace Process, to coordinate inter- agency support for peace and peace issues. 2. The move of to mobilize the resources from a Friends of the Congo initiative to give real meaning to the peace process so that the peoples of the Congo can be central to the peace process. At the minimum this would involve commitments to infrastructure reconstruction so that there can be free movement of people in the Congo. The requirement for the completion of these tasks is the political will to move in a new direction. The cynical will say that there can be no support for the peace process in an election year in the USA. This is wrong thinking because it is only in Africa where the USA is of the view that there is no political cost for action or inaction in Africa. The questions of police brutality, violence against the youth and the imprisonment of the African American youth are issues that will be on the front burner all of this year. Already in the African American community the positions on racial profiling and Mumia Abu Jamal are being used as a litmus test for politicians. The Battles in Seattle was a manifestation that there are sections of the US population who will no longer support the militaristic foreign policies that prop up corporations exploiting the globe. Whether it is the trade union leadership, the environmental lobby, the debt relief and Jubilee 2000 networks, the gay and lesbian lobby, the feminist organizers or the health and public education organizers, there is a new constituency at large in US politics. Conclusion: The Danube and the Congo River The question of peace in the Congo is tied to the ways in which the water resources of the Congo are harnessed for the peoples of Africa. Just as how there is concern for the reopening of the Danube there must be concern for the health and security of all the people. Putting one hundred million dollars to support the fight against AIDS when the World Bank say that a serious fight requires US 2.5 billion demonstrates that the US is basically posturing in the Security Council of the United Nations. And yet, it is the very same healing from the horrors of the killing of Lumumba and the response to genocide that can heal and reignite the United Nations. For the USA to be taken seriously the same resources that were placed at the disposal of a Savimbi or Mobutu must be placed in the Lusaka Implementation Office. The era of realism should go out with 1999. January is the month of the assassination of Lumumba. The killing of Lumumba coincided with the repression against the Civil Rights leaders culminating in the assassination of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. The ghost of Lumumba haunts the US government. For this reason, the US cannot support any real initiative towards peace. The ghost of Lumumba must be excoriated before there can be peace. This task will await a fundamental change in the domestic policies of the USA. Africans will fight for this fundamental change. When the peoples of South Africa were fighting against apartheid, the likes of Kissinger and the realists supported those with military power. There was no room for morality. In fact, it was a morality that supported racism at home and abroad. There was an end to apartheid. There will be peace in the Congo. -30- BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News Articles/Reports Subscribe: Email "subscribe brc-news" to ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytaf-02.11.00-09:01:21-20833