Madsen chronicles how the US via its proxies in Rwanda and Uganda has been instrumental in the destabilization of Congo. Supplying arms, stoking ethnic divisions as well providing covert military and intelligence support systems to rebel groups.
Story Transcript
Destabilization in the Congo
Producer: Zaa Nkweta
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ZAA NKWETA, TRNN: In Part 2 of my discussion with investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, Madsen chronicles how the US via its proxies in Rwanda and Uganda have been instrumental in the destabilization of Congo, supplying arms, stoking ethnic divisions, as well as providing covert support systems to rebel groups. Having an ineffective leader in power like Congolese President Joseph Kabila also helps. Here’s Part 2.
WAYNE MADSEN, INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR: Kabila is a very young president. He’s undergone elections in Congo. He did win. He’s not the strongest leader, but the powers that be do not want, necessarily, a strong leader in the Congolese capital of Kinshasa. A strong leader might try to unify the country, and that goes against everything both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, and, unfortunately, it looks like the Obama administration, especially with the appearance of the Africa Command, which looks like Obama will keep in place, this new US military command for Africa. It looks like Kabila is really going to be under a lot of pressure from people like Nkunda. Ethnicity is very much a part of this, but the ethnicity is being stoked, of course, by the US allowing its client, Kagami, to provide all kinds of weaponry to Nkunda to keep this civil war going. It’s the weapons, the introduction of weapons from the outside, that stoked these inter-ethnic conflicts. And there has been, since the United States assassinated—basically helped assassinate Patrice Lumumba four days before John F. Kennedy became president in 1961, there’s been a strong effort to keep Congo as destabilized as possible. … Patrice Lumumba, who was a true Congolese nationalist who was very much ready to unite that country, except the United States called him a communist, and he became an assassination target, and in this case a successful one. Obviously, we’re not using United States military personnel, active-duty personnel, in a lot of these support measures for these rebel groups in Congo; we’re using private military contractors, because it’s much harder and much more difficult for the Congress to investigate the activities of private military contractors as we know was the case with Blackwater in Iraq. But before we heard a lot about Blackwater, there were companies like MPRI, Military Professional Resources Incorporated, active in Rwanda, active in eastern Congo. There were other, smaller private military companies. Now, sometimes these companies are not only working for the Pentagon but also working for US intelligence agencies to provide the covert support to these various rebel factions, and that certainly has been the case ever since the outbreak of violence in Rwanda after the assassination of the two presidents is 1994. There’s been a lot of activity by these private military contractors, working hand-in-glove with primarily not the CIA, but the less-known US intelligence agency which has been very active in Africa, and that’s the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency.
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