{UAH} FW: M7 in Congo and Sudan Booty pays for War

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Date: Thu, 22 Sep 2005 20:35:13 +0200
From: lovekarlstad@yahoo.se
Subject: M7 in Congo and Sudan Booty pays for War
To: abbenasser@hotmail.com

Museveni in Congo and Sudan: 
Booty pays for war
by Linda de Hoyos
Executive Intelligence Review, Nov. 27, 1998, pp. 55-56

The Chief of Staff of the Ugandan Popular Defense Forces  (UPDF), Brig. Gen. James Kazini, a nephew of Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni, is at the center of charges against the Ugandan army of wholesale looting in Uganda and southern Sudan. As EIR reported in its last issue (see pp. 58-65), Kazini was also caught in a covert caper to smuggle arms to the Sudanese People's Liberation Army of John Garang, operating in cahoots with Roger Winter of the U.S. Committee on Refugees, Daniel Eiffe of Norwegian Peoples Aid, and notorious gun-smugglers Michael Harari, formerly Israeli Mossad station chief for South America, and Alberto P. Herreros, formerly a prime contract for the illegal George Bush-Oliver North Contra supply operation of the 1980s.     

 

The question now being raised is whether the covert supply of arms is being paid for by booty gathered by the Ugandan Armed Forces, which invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo on Aug. 2, and followed that with an invasion of Sudan in September. According to some sources, the money garnered from the sale of the gold, timber, and diamonds, being looted out of Congo and southern Sudan, is put into offshore bank accounts, and then used to buy the arms and other supplies to keep the wars going.     

According to a South African intelligence source, Kazini was in command of the invasion of the Congo, the source having accompanied him during the campaign in western Congo, which failed. Kazini's presence in Congo is not just military, but is also for business-a fact that came to light when Kazini's brother, Col. Jet Mwebaze, was Bled in a crash on Sept. 26 of a private plane, apparently on its way to the Congo. Soon after the rescue of some of the survivors of the crash, news began to leak out that pointed to far more than a technical failure or weather problems:   

 

The pilot of the plane was found with a bullet in his head.     

Colonel Mwebaze was reportedly also shot before or after the plane crashed.     

 

More than $1 million in cash was found on the plane.     

Other passengers on the plane included Asian businessman Arif Mulfi and Israeli businessman Zeev Shif, a partner in the Eforte Corp., a company of Salim Saleh, half-brother to President Museveni and Museveni?s top military adviser.

 

Speculation is rife throughout Uganda that the plane was going to the Congo for a pick-up of gold in areas currently under the occupation of Ugandan troops.   

 

Corroboration of this idea soon came from an unexpected source: an article appearing in the Oct. 12 issue of New Times, the semi-official newspaper of the Rwandan government, a military satellite of Museveni's Uganda. The paper    reported a "growing rift? between the Rwandan and Ugandan forces now occupying eastern portions of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, blaming the tensions on a "clique" in the UPDF centered on Kazini and Salim Sateh. Titled "Saleh Reducing the UPDF to a Thieving Gang," the article said, "When the war against [Congo President Laurent] Kabila broke out in the Congo, this clique saw it as a windfall-literally as a goldmine . . .. The clique now wreaking havoc in    the Congo includes Maj. Gen. Salim Saleh, Brigadier Kazini, Colonel Kerim, Major Ikondere, and the late Lt. Col. Jet Mwebaze. The list reads like a who's who of the UPDF's top convicts."     

 

The article charged, "A brave and personable officer, Colonel Mwebaze died on a gold mission in the company of elements of a murky international gold- and money-laundering syndicate, heading for the part of the Congo under the    control of his own brother, Brigadier Kazini, in the service of General Salim Saleh, the overall warlord." The article was written by a Rwandan veteran of both the Rwandan Patriotic Army and Museveni's National Resistance Army.     

 

The article further excoriated Salim Saleh for his involvement in privatization in Uganda, saying that he took a $1.5- million commission on a recent purchase of defective army helicopters.      

 

The paper prompted a visit to Kigali, Rwanda from Salim Saleh, and a trip to Kampala, Uganda to meet Museveni by Rwandan Defense Minister Paul Kagame.      

 

Salim Sateh admitted to the press that he was retrieving business operations lost with Kabila: "I used to have business with Kabila, but that is now lost," Salim told New Vision. He also said that the Israeli businessman on Jet's plane was in the gold business for him.

 

He also attacked the Rwandans for "washing the dirty linen in public," but said that the rift had been heated. "We have now established a new code of conduct for smooth running of our operations."      

 

Salim Saleh has also come under scrutiny from the Ugandan Parliament for allegations that he is the hidden buyer of the Ugandan Commercial Bank, which is being privatized by the government.

 

Before taking charge of the invasion of the Congo, Brigadier Kazini was commander of the fourth division of the UPDF, and in charge of operations in the north against the rebel Lord's Resistance Army and in support of the Sudanese 56.

 

As the mystery surrounding Mwebeze's death was still swirling around, an article appeared in the Ugandan opposition newspaper, which quoted an unnamed official of the SPLA complaining that Jet had also been in charge of a company that was fleecing southern Sudan of its resources of gold and timber. "Jet was the managing director of the New Sudan Trading Corporation (NSTC), which was the company formed by the SPLA to help in facilitating trade in areas under its control," the SPLA official said. He charged that the company was in fact dominated by Ugandan army officers, government ministers, and businessmen.

 

 The SPLA official said that in return for their share in the company, the Ugandan     government permitted the SPLA to have free rein in northern Uganda to recruit guerrillas and to conduct private businesses, especially trade in cattle.

 

The looting of southern Sudan and eastern Congo by the Ugandan military clique led by Museveni proceeds despite the fact that Uganda is being aided by outside sources as well.

 

 In hearings on July 29, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Susan     Rice, an enthusiastic supporter of Museveni, reported that the United States provided Uganda with $3.85 million in military equipment last year, and will likely do so again in 1998, in addition to an International Military Education and Training Program. Under questioning, she admitted that the Ugandan     military had "a lot of problems" of corruption and lack of discipline, which the government is not dealing with successfully.

 

The privatized looting is also evidently required despite a 26% increase in the Ugandan military budget announced for the 1998-99 budget by Minister of Finance, Planning, and Economic Development Gerald Sendaula-an increase which has caused protest among parliamentarians who represent Uganda's service-starved people.

 

 But Museveni was defended in this action by no less than the World Bank representative in Kampala, Randolph Harris, who proclaimed that the     "security threats" to Uganda cannot be ignored.

 

Money to feed the war effort continues to roll in. The International Monetary Fund announced on Nov. 11 that it will hand over a $46 million loan to support Uganda's 1998-99 "economic program."

It is the conjecture of Ugandans that most of this money, including a recent grant from the British government of ₤67 million, will be siphoned off to pay for Museveni's military operations in the region, wars which the Ugandan people do not support.       

 

An additional question is: How much of a slice do Museveni and his relatives, including Salim Saleh, Kazini, and others who now dominate the Ugandan Armed Forces, get from the booty-grabbing and other money flows? No matter what     the size of the slice, however, the British Commonwealth extraction companies that follow in the wake of the military triumphs of Museveni's mercenary army, will take the biggest share of all.