Can someone please invade Zimbabwe?

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sikander


No one was on a hotline to Washington, which quite frankly didn't care very much about this corner of the world, save that its supplies of strategic metals etc. from South Africa remained unharmed by Soviet clients in neighboring states.

'U.S. officials were for the most part more circumspect about expressing such views. The Reagan Administration could not openly link its proposals to the Front-line States to such crude threats. But the link was there nonetheless, and the Front-line States understood this. In late 1983, in an interview with the Johannesburg Financial Mail (November 18, 1983), Charles Lichenstein, the Deputy U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, made it abundantly plain that the U.S. and South Africa were working to the same plan. In as clear a threat as any American official had made publicly, Lichenstein said that "destabilization will remain in force until Angola and Mozambique do not permit their territory to be used by terrorists to at tack South Africa."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US...rica_wars.html

Not what I'd call neglect...

[Ted Striker]

Give it up molly, you've got nothing but keep dragging this list of quotes from Angola on and on and on...

You've produced a patchwork of different sources dependent on the US/CIA Boogie Man Theory, and that at very best would should a US involvement on the periphery of events that were ALREADY IN MOTION.

On the other, hand you deny the common knowledge that says any US involvement in Africa amounts to a DROP IN THE BUCKET compared with the overwhelming direct control Europeans exercised over the continent for several hundred years.

But feel free to throw on more quotes that basically say the same thing over and over...

[rmsharpe]

Most of the problems in Africa today are the direct result of their own mistakes, not America or the former colonizing nations.

In my personal opinion, the only solution is the re-colonization of Africa and installation of white-ruled governments until the populous is educated enough and tribal rivalries can be crushed.

Think about it - many blacks even MOVED TO South Africa during "apartheid," because of the opportunities that other African countries didn't have.

[chequita guevara]

While direct covert aid to UNITA was outlawed in 1976, a year later, the CIA still had people directing UNITA actions in Angola. John Stockwell was the CIA cheif of operations in Angola, and he wrote a book about his experience there, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story.

Sikander, the CIA closely cooperated with the South African security apparatus. To say that South Africa was largely responsible for RENAMO and UNITA overlooks the point that the US gave aid to South Africa specifically for the purpose of being given to these thugs. With the CIA and South African security working so closely together, don't you think it's not much of a leap for the CIA people there to be directing RENAMO and UNITA? Given that Stockwell admits what he was doing, it's not a leap at all. It's historical fact.

[Ted Striker]

It's still a raindrop in the middle of a raging river.

[Ted Striker]

Oh, and by the way, the 2 countries leading the peace negotiations in that situation -- UK and US

[Sikander]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
While direct covert aid to UNITA was outlawed in 1976, a year later, the CIA still had people directing UNITA actions in Angola. John Stockwell was the CIA cheif of operations in Angola, and he wrote a book about his experience there, In Search of Enemies: A CIA Story.

Sikander, the CIA closely cooperated with the South African security apparatus. To say that South Africa was largely responsible for RENAMO and UNITA overlooks the point that the US gave aid to South Africa specifically for the purpose of being given to these thugs. With the CIA and South African security working so closely together, don't you think it's not much of a leap for the CIA people there to be directing RENAMO and UNITA? Given that Stockwell admits what he was doing, it's not a leap at all. It's historical fact.

UNITA was largely an American backed operation that was later supported in conjuction with South Africa. RENAMO was a South African operation whose connections to the U.S. are tenuous at best. Don't confuse the two, or make a connection that I have seen no proof for despite the volume of links and quoted text and my own long interest in the subject. I have never seen any information that would indicate any sort of operational control of RENAMO from Washington, and I have seen plenty of information both at the time and now that indicated South African control of RENAMO both politically and operationally from the end of Rhodesia. Show me some evidence to the contrary and I will consider it, otherwise I think my appraisal is pretty fair.

I don't doubt that the U.S. was happy that RENAMO was making life difficult for Mozambique's regime, but the U.S. did not fight the Cold War alone nor did they direct every action of every group nominally on "our side". Very far from it.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Give it up molly, you've got nothing but keep dragging this list of quotes from Angola on and on and on...

On the other, hand you deny the common knowledge that says any US involvement in Africa amounts to a DROP IN THE BUCKET compared with the overwhelming direct control Europeans exercised over the continent for several hundred years.

But feel free to throw on more quotes that basically say the same thing over and over...

Ah yes, 'common' knowledge. What one falls back on, when you have no argument.

In how many African countries post independence has the United States acted to remove the head of state or financed a civil war, or terrorist attacks? Care to hazard a guess, Ted old bean?

Take Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah removed.
The Congo/Zaire- Patrice Lumumba removed.
Angola- civil war.
Uganda- civil war.
Mozambique- civil war.
Ethiopia- civil war.
The Sudan- civil war.
Liberia- a coup and a civil war.
Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Namibia and Mozambique- terrorist attacks and direct military intervention by the U.S. proxies, apartheid South Africa, and racist Rhodesia.
Somalia and Libya- direct military intervention by the U.S.

The list goes on, but suffice to say, the U.S. has been busy, either directly or indirectly. The net result- appalling poverty, refugees on a colossal scale, and its client state Zaire becoming the eighth poorest nation on earth after 30 years of rule by the United States' stooge Mobutu. That's not a bad achievement for a country that holds the world's largest reserves of cobalt (70%) .

'The economic stakes in the Congo basin are high. The Inga Dam alone could provide enough hydroelectric power to meet all the current needs of SADC nations, including South Africa. The Congo/Zaire has been the world's largest cobalt exporter and has ranked among the top ten world producers of uranium, copper, manganese, and tin--all vital to aerospace and military industries. The major importer of these low-cost minerals has been U.S. industry. In addition, the biodiversity riches of the vast rain forest have yet to be mapped. U.S. and Belgian mining corporations continue to mine Congo's minerals, including diamonds, making enormous profits during the instability. '

-Carol Thompson is a specialist on Southern Africa and a professor of political economy at Northern Arizona University. She is on sabbatical, doing research and writing at the University of Zimbabwe

What did the U.S. get for its support of Ian Smith's Rhodesia (remember, Ted, the U.S., along with Salazar's fascist regime in Portugal and South Africa helped break sanctions on Rhodesia) and the apartheid state?

Well, in Mozambique it gained a country among the top ten poorest in the world, with a per capita income of $ 80 in 1984. Not a bad investment, eh? And why was the U.S. interested in Mozambique? This U.S.A.F. assessment may give an inkling:

'The long term payoff would be a stable country in Southern Africa friendly to the U.S., one which would promote peaceful regional initiatives. Militarily, it is useful as a strategic access to secure lines of communications as well as the strategic minerals it possesses. It would be beneficial to our nation while
providing the basis for Mozambique to rebuild itself.

MOZAMBIQUE'S SIXTEEN-YEAR BLOODY CIVIL WAR

Since December 1990, Mozambique has enjoyed a partial cease fire from its 16-year devastating Civil War. This war has torn the nation apart and has caused
widespread economic misery and famine. Few Americans are familiar with Mozambique; therefore, a review of its background and development, including the
current status of its brutal Civil War, will help determine if it is in our national interest economically and militarily to continue our current involvement.

Mozambique is located on the Indian Ocean in southern Africa. Its 2,000-mile coastline and three major ports of Maputo, Beira, and Nacala are all ideally suited
for naval bases and have long been coveted by the superpowers. These ports, from which a great power could interdict, or at least disrupt, Indian Ocean commerce and alter the balance of power in Southern Africa, also offer international gateways to the landlocked countries of the region.

The nation's strategic importance, however, transcends its geographic position. Mozambique, according to Business International, "Mozambique: On the Road to
Reconstruction and Development? (Geneva, 1980), has enormous mineral potential.

The world's largest reserve of columbotantalite, which is used to make nuclear reactors and aircraft and missile parts, is located in Zambezia Province in central
Mozambique. The country is the second most important producer of beryllium, another highly desired strategic mineral.(5:1)....

Militarily, it is very attractive to have strategic access to a "choke point" such as Capetown point to secure lines of logistical reinforcement for naval supremacy. Additionally, the strategic minerals in Mozambique could be useful to the U.S. U.S. support to Mozambique contingent on a continued cease fire of its civil war would be beneficial to our nation while providing the basis for Mozambique to rebuild itself."

AUTHOR Major Lance S. Young, USAF
CSC 1991
SUBJECT AREA - General
MOZAMBIQUE'S 16-YEAR BLOODY CIVIL WAR
OUTLINE
THESIS: Our exploration of the background and development of Mozambique,
including the current status of its brutal Civil War, demonstrates that it is in our national interest economically and militarily to continue to support the nation's evolution.

Note- he makes next to no reference to who helped prosecute the civil war in Mozambique- perhaps that would have been a little impolitic.

Sikander- I said the C.I.A. armed and funded Renamo. At no point did I suggest that the C.I.A. directed Renamo's operations. If the C.I.A. armed South African forces, or sold arms to South Africa to be used by Renamo, or gave funds to South Africa to be used to arm Renamo, then ultimately the C.I.A. funded and armed Renamo. This does not imply that the C.I.A. was the sole supporter of Renamo. As John Stockwell, ex-C.I.A. agent seems to agree:

"And the CIA director was required by law to brief the Congress. This CIA director Bill Colby - the same one that dumped our people in Vietnam - he gave 36 briefings of the Congress, the oversight committees, about what we were doing in Angola. And he lied. At 36 formal briefings. And such lies are perjury, and it's a felony to lie to the Congress.

He lied about our relationship with South Africa. We were working closely with the South African army, giving them our arms, coordinating battles with them, giving them fuel for their tanks and armored cars. He said we were staying well away from them. They were concerned about these white mercenaries that were appearing in Angola, a very sensitive issue, hiring whites to go into a black African country, to help you impose your will on that black African country by killing the blacks, a very sensitive issue. The Congress was concerned we might be involved in that, and he assured them we had nothing to do with it."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/St...llCIA87_1.html

"The CIA has traditionally sympathized with South Africa and enjoyed its close liaison with BOSS. The two organizations share a violent antipathy toward communism and in the early sixties the South Africans had facilitated the agency's development of a mercenary army to suppress the Congo rebellion. BOSS, however, tolerates little clandestine nonsense inside the country and the CIA had always restricted its Pretoria station's activity to maintaining the liaison with BOSS. That is, until 1974, when it yielded to intense pressures in Washington and expanded the Pretoria station's responsibilities to include covert operations to gather intelligence about the South African nuclear project. In the summer of 1975 BOSS rolled up this effort and quietly expelled those CIA personnel directly involved. The agency did not complain, as the effort was acknowledged to have been clumsy and obvious. The agency continued its cordial relationship with BOSS.
Thus, without any memos being written at CIA headquarters saying "Let's coordinate with the South Africans," coordination was effected at all CIA levels and the South Africans escalated their involvement in step with our own."
The South African question led me into another confrontation with Potts. South African racial policies had of course become a hated symbol to blacks, civil libertarians, and world minorities-the focal point of centuries-old resentment of racism, colonialism, and white domination. Did Potts not see that the South Africans were attempting to draw closer to the United States, in preparation for future confrontations with the blacks in southern Africa? If he did, he was not troubled by the prospect. Potts viewed South Africa pragmatically, as a friend of the CIA and a potential ally of the United States. After all, twenty major American companies have interests in South Africa and the United States maintains a valuable NASA tracking station not far from Pretoria. Eventually Potts concluded, in one of our conversations, that blacks were "irrational" on the subject of South Africa. This term caught on. It even crept into the cable traffic when the South African presence became known and the Nigerians, Tanzanians, and Ugandans reacted vigorously.
Escalation was a game the CIA and South Africa played very well together. In October the South Africans requested, through the CIA station chief in Pretoria, ammunition for their 155 mm. howitzers. It was not clear whether they intended to use this ammunition in Angola. At about the same time the CIA was seeking funds for another shipload of arms and worrying about how to get those arms into Angola efficiently. Our experience with the American Champion had us all dreading the thought of working another shipload of arms through the congested Matadi port and attempting to fly them into Angola with our ragtag little air force. The thought of putting the next shipload of arms into Walvis Bay in South-West Africa, where South African efficiency would rush them by C-l30 to the fighting fronts, was irresistible to Jim Potts.
At the same time, Savimbi and Roberto were both running short of petrol. The South Africans had delivered small amounts in their C-l30s, but they could not be expected to fuel the entire war, not with an Arab boycott on the sale of oil to South Africa. The MPLA's fuel problems had been solved when a tanker put into Luanda in September, and Potts, in frustration, began to consider having a tanker follow the second arms shipload to Walvis Bay.
When Potts proposed this to the working group, he met firm opposition: He was told by Ambassador Mulcahy that the sale or delivery of arms to South Africa was prohibited by a long-standing U.S. law. Never easily discouraged, Potts sent one of his aides to the CIA library, and in the next working group meeting triumphantly read to the working group the text of the thirteen-year-old "law."
"You see, gentlemen," he concluded with obvious satisfaction. "It isn't a law. It's a policy decision made under the Kennedy administration. Times have now changed and, given our present problems, we should have no difficulty modifying this policy." He meant that a few technical strings could be pulled on the hill, Kissinger could wave his hand over a piece of paper, and a planeload of arms could leave for South Africa the next day.
p250

In Search of Enemies, John Stockwell

and finally:

"In assessing the prospects for the future, it should be remembered that South Africa and the U.S . have embarked on an extremely ambitious and rash exercise, that of bringing an end to socialist experiments in the entire southern African region. It has been clear for some time that they are bent on overthrowing the socialist governments already established there. In the spring of 1983, western diplomats at the U.N. were already speaking of ''the determination on the part of the Reagan Administration and South Africa to gradually rid southern Africa of Marxist regimes." (Louis Wiznitzer, ''U.N. Security Council Likely to be Drawn Into Namibian Debate,'' Christian Science Monitor, March 31, 1983. )
This means that the pressure on Angola and Mozambique in particular is bound to increase. There is now a real danger that, by a combination of economic, political, and military pressure, South Africa and the U.S. will continue to seek to overthrow the Machel government in Mozambique, opening a serious breach in the Front-line States and paving the way to expanded regional conflict and economic and social chaos.
Before that happens, the Congress and the public should look much more closely at the role which the Reagan Administration has been playing in southern Africa during the last three years. For the war against the Front-line States which it has been waging jointly with South Africa is illegal and barbarous. It should not be permitted to continue.
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker has said that he wants to see "negotiated solutions" and ''peaceful change'' in southern Africa. In pursuit of this goal, the Reagan Administration and its racist ally have unleashed a war which has devastated an entire subcontinent and cost tens of thousands of lives. This is terrorism on a scale which has not been seen since the U.S. intervention in Indochina.


Sean Gervasi is a visiting professor of economics at the university of Paris, and former Assistant in the Office of the U.N. commissioner for Namibia.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US...rica_wars.html

[Sikander]

Could you highlight the portion of that which supports your point about RENAMO being armed and funded by the CIA? I don't see it. This looks mainly like a bunch of stuff about UNITA, which I only mentioned in a previous post to say that I haven't mentioned them, just RENAMO.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by molly bloom


Ah yes, 'common' knowledge. What one falls back on, when you have no argument.

In how many African countries post independence has the United States acted to remove the head of state or financed a civil war, or terrorist attacks? Care to hazard a guess, Ted old bean?

Take Ghana. Kwame Nkrumah removed.
The Congo/Zaire- Patrice Lumumba removed.
Angola- civil war.
Uganda- civil war.
Mozambique- civil war.
Ethiopia- civil war.
The Sudan- civil war.
Liberia- a coup and a civil war.
Botswana, Zambia, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and Namibia and Mozambique- terrorist attacks and direct military intervention by the U.S. proxies, apartheid South Africa, and racist Rhodesia.
Somalia and Libya- direct military intervention by the U.S.

The list goes on, but suffice to say, the U.S. has been busy, either directly or indirectly. The net result- appalling poverty, refugees on a colossal scale, and its client state Zaire becoming the eighth poorest nation on earth after 30 years of rule by the United States' stooge Mobutu. That's not a bad achievement for a country that holds the world's largest reserves of cobalt (70%) .

'The economic stakes in the Congo basin are high. The Inga Dam alone could provide enough hydroelectric power to meet all the current needs of SADC nations, including South Africa. The Congo/Zaire has been the world's largest cobalt exporter and has ranked among the top ten world producers of uranium, copper, manganese, and tin--all vital to aerospace and military industries. The major importer of these low-cost minerals has been U.S. industry. In addition, the biodiversity riches of the vast rain forest have yet to be mapped. U.S. and Belgian mining corporations continue to mine Congo's minerals, including diamonds, making enormous profits during the instability. '

-Carol Thompson is a specialist on Southern Africa and a professor of political economy at Northern Arizona University. She is on sabbatical, doing research and writing at the University of Zimbabwe

What did the U.S. get for its support of Ian Smith's Rhodesia (remember, Ted, the U.S., along with Salazar's fascist regime in Portugal and South Africa helped break sanctions on Rhodesia) and the apartheid state?

Well, in Mozambique it gained a country among the top ten poorest in the world, with a per capita income of $ 80 in 1984. Not a bad investment, eh? And why was the U.S. interested in Mozambique? This U.S.A.F. assessment may give an inkling:

'The long term payoff would be a stable country in Southern Africa friendly to the U.S., one which would promote peaceful regional initiatives. Militarily, it is useful as a strategic access to secure lines of communications as well as the strategic minerals it possesses. It would be beneficial to our nation while
providing the basis for Mozambique to rebuild itself.

MOZAMBIQUE'S SIXTEEN-YEAR BLOODY CIVIL WAR

Since December 1990, Mozambique has enjoyed a partial cease fire from its 16-year devastating Civil War. This war has torn the nation apart and has caused
widespread economic misery and famine. Few Americans are familiar with Mozambique; therefore, a review of its background and development, including the
current status of its brutal Civil War, will help determine if it is in our national interest economically and militarily to continue our current involvement.

Mozambique is located on the Indian Ocean in southern Africa. Its 2,000-mile coastline and three major ports of Maputo, Beira, and Nacala are all ideally suited
for naval bases and have long been coveted by the superpowers. These ports, from which a great power could interdict, or at least disrupt, Indian Ocean commerce and alter the balance of power in Southern Africa, also offer international gateways to the landlocked countries of the region.

The nation's strategic importance, however, transcends its geographic position. Mozambique, according to Business International, "Mozambique: On the Road to
Reconstruction and Development? (Geneva, 1980), has enormous mineral potential.

The world's largest reserve of columbotantalite, which is used to make nuclear reactors and aircraft and missile parts, is located in Zambezia Province in central
Mozambique. The country is the second most important producer of beryllium, another highly desired strategic mineral.(5:1)....

Militarily, it is very attractive to have strategic access to a "choke point" such as Capetown point to secure lines of logistical reinforcement for naval supremacy. Additionally, the strategic minerals in Mozambique could be useful to the U.S. U.S. support to Mozambique contingent on a continued cease fire of its civil war would be beneficial to our nation while providing the basis for Mozambique to rebuild itself."

AUTHOR Major Lance S. Young, USAF
CSC 1991
SUBJECT AREA - General
MOZAMBIQUE'S 16-YEAR BLOODY CIVIL WAR
OUTLINE
THESIS: Our exploration of the background and development of Mozambique,
including the current status of its brutal Civil War, demonstrates that it is in our national interest economically and militarily to continue to support the nation's evolution.

Note- he makes next to no reference to who helped prosecute the civil war in Mozambique- perhaps that would have been a little impolitic.

Sikander- I said the C.I.A. armed and funded Renamo. At no point did I suggest that the C.I.A. directed Renamo's operations. If the C.I.A. armed South African forces, or sold arms to South Africa to be used by Renamo, or gave funds to South Africa to be used to arm Renamo, then ultimately the C.I.A. funded and armed Renamo. This does not imply that the C.I.A. was the sole supporter of Renamo. As John Stockwell, ex-C.I.A. agent seems to agree:

"And the CIA director was required by law to brief the Congress. This CIA director Bill Colby - the same one that dumped our people in Vietnam - he gave 36 briefings of the Congress, the oversight committees, about what we were doing in Angola. And he lied. At 36 formal briefings. And such lies are perjury, and it's a felony to lie to the Congress.

He lied about our relationship with South Africa. We were working closely with the South African army, giving them our arms, coordinating battles with them, giving them fuel for their tanks and armored cars. He said we were staying well away from them. They were concerned about these white mercenaries that were appearing in Angola, a very sensitive issue, hiring whites to go into a black African country, to help you impose your will on that black African country by killing the blacks, a very sensitive issue. The Congress was concerned we might be involved in that, and he assured them we had nothing to do with it."

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/St...llCIA87_1.html

"The CIA has traditionally sympathized with South Africa and enjoyed its close liaison with BOSS. The two organizations share a violent antipathy toward communism and in the early sixties the South Africans had facilitated the agency's development of a mercenary army to suppress the Congo rebellion. BOSS, however, tolerates little clandestine nonsense inside the country and the CIA had always restricted its Pretoria station's activity to maintaining the liaison with BOSS. That is, until 1974, when it yielded to intense pressures in Washington and expanded the Pretoria station's responsibilities to include covert operations to gather intelligence about the South African nuclear project. In the summer of 1975 BOSS rolled up this effort and quietly expelled those CIA personnel directly involved. The agency did not complain, as the effort was acknowledged to have been clumsy and obvious. The agency continued its cordial relationship with BOSS.
Thus, without any memos being written at CIA headquarters saying "Let's coordinate with the South Africans," coordination was effected at all CIA levels and the South Africans escalated their involvement in step with our own."
The South African question led me into another confrontation with Potts. South African racial policies had of course become a hated symbol to blacks, civil libertarians, and world minorities-the focal point of centuries-old resentment of racism, colonialism, and white domination. Did Potts not see that the South Africans were attempting to draw closer to the United States, in preparation for future confrontations with the blacks in southern Africa? If he did, he was not troubled by the prospect. Potts viewed South Africa pragmatically, as a friend of the CIA and a potential ally of the United States. After all, twenty major American companies have interests in South Africa and the United States maintains a valuable NASA tracking station not far from Pretoria. Eventually Potts concluded, in one of our conversations, that blacks were "irrational" on the subject of South Africa. This term caught on. It even crept into the cable traffic when the South African presence became known and the Nigerians, Tanzanians, and Ugandans reacted vigorously.
Escalation was a game the CIA and South Africa played very well together. In October the South Africans requested, through the CIA station chief in Pretoria, ammunition for their 155 mm. howitzers. It was not clear whether they intended to use this ammunition in Angola. At about the same time the CIA was seeking funds for another shipload of arms and worrying about how to get those arms into Angola efficiently. Our experience with the American Champion had us all dreading the thought of working another shipload of arms through the congested Matadi port and attempting to fly them into Angola with our ragtag little air force. The thought of putting the next shipload of arms into Walvis Bay in South-West Africa, where South African efficiency would rush them by C-l30 to the fighting fronts, was irresistible to Jim Potts.
At the same time, Savimbi and Roberto were both running short of petrol. The South Africans had delivered small amounts in their C-l30s, but they could not be expected to fuel the entire war, not with an Arab boycott on the sale of oil to South Africa. The MPLA's fuel problems had been solved when a tanker put into Luanda in September, and Potts, in frustration, began to consider having a tanker follow the second arms shipload to Walvis Bay.
When Potts proposed this to the working group, he met firm opposition: He was told by Ambassador Mulcahy that the sale or delivery of arms to South Africa was prohibited by a long-standing U.S. law. Never easily discouraged, Potts sent one of his aides to the CIA library, and in the next working group meeting triumphantly read to the working group the text of the thirteen-year-old "law."
"You see, gentlemen," he concluded with obvious satisfaction. "It isn't a law. It's a policy decision made under the Kennedy administration. Times have now changed and, given our present problems, we should have no difficulty modifying this policy." He meant that a few technical strings could be pulled on the hill, Kissinger could wave his hand over a piece of paper, and a planeload of arms could leave for South Africa the next day.
p250

In Search of Enemies, John Stockwell

and finally:

"In assessing the prospects for the future, it should be remembered that South Africa and the U.S . have embarked on an extremely ambitious and rash exercise, that of bringing an end to socialist experiments in the entire southern African region. It has been clear for some time that they are bent on overthrowing the socialist governments already established there. In the spring of 1983, western diplomats at the U.N. were already speaking of ''the determination on the part of the Reagan Administration and South Africa to gradually rid southern Africa of Marxist regimes." (Louis Wiznitzer, ''U.N. Security Council Likely to be Drawn Into Namibian Debate,'' Christian Science Monitor, March 31, 1983. )
This means that the pressure on Angola and Mozambique in particular is bound to increase. There is now a real danger that, by a combination of economic, political, and military pressure, South Africa and the U.S. will continue to seek to overthrow the Machel government in Mozambique, opening a serious breach in the Front-line States and paving the way to expanded regional conflict and economic and social chaos.
Before that happens, the Congress and the public should look much more closely at the role which the Reagan Administration has been playing in southern Africa during the last three years. For the war against the Front-line States which it has been waging jointly with South Africa is illegal and barbarous. It should not be permitted to continue.
Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker has said that he wants to see "negotiated solutions" and ''peaceful change'' in southern Africa. In pursuit of this goal, the Reagan Administration and its racist ally have unleashed a war which has devastated an entire subcontinent and cost tens of thousands of lives. This is terrorism on a scale which has not been seen since the U.S. intervention in Indochina.


Sean Gervasi is a visiting professor of economics at the university of Paris, and former Assistant in the Office of the U.N. commissioner for Namibia.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US...rica_wars.html

This is all well and good, (though questionable) but it's still a drop in a river compared with the effects of hundreds of years of direct European rule. Those places were all messed up in the first place when they were abondoned by their European overlords.

But hey if you want to cite more lengthy Boogie Man lists, by all means go ahead, I'm not going to stop you.

I think the US was directly responsible for Apartheid as well.

[chequita guevara]

Ted, do you know of the concept of selective quoting?

[Pekka]

This Mugabe guy makes me aggressive. Every time I read about this jerk, or see his picture, I become aggressive. It's almost personal, if I'll ever get the chance, I won't think twice or blink.

[Pekka]

I hope you guys are happy now. I have to go running to calm down. Someone just please KILL THIS GUY!

[chequita guevara]

Why? He's a thug, but by any objective standard, he's comparitively tame. I already listed a bunch of countries that are far worse than Mugabe's Zimbabwe. I think the main problem most people have with him is that he's picking on poor little white colonizers who farm stolen land.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I think the main problem most people have with him is that he's picking on poor little white colonizers who farm stolen land.

The main problem people have is that his policies have ruined what used to be a breadbasket of Africa.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Ted, do you know of the concept of selective quoting?

Quit whining.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ted Striker


This is all well and good, (though questionable) but it's still a drop in a river compared with the effects of hundreds of years of direct European rule. Those places were all messed up in the first place when they were abondoned by their European overlords.

If you consider parts of it to be questionable, post your contradictory evidence. Put up or shut up. And while you're at it, explain how desertification is the fault of the colonial powers. I wasn't aware they had the ability to control thousands of years of changing weather patterns.

Gosh, Ted, it’s always fun replying to your posts. In this instance, my fun derives both from your poor arithmetic and your shaky grasp of history.

You say Europeans had control of the continent for ‘hundreds of years.’ How many hundreds would you say? Two hundred ? Three hundred ? Four hundred ? I ask, because you may not recall, but the ‘Scramble for Africa’ did not begin until the latter part of the 19th century. Great Britain occupied The Gambia in 1816
and The Gold Coast/Ghana in 1821. At that time, the majority of Africa was ruled by local, indigenous rulers, with the exception of the Ottoman Turks in the north of Africa, and Arab sultanates in East Africa.
Ghana achieved independence in 1957. Now if you deduct 1821 from 1957 you get a grand total of 136 years. Not hundreds at all, you’ll notice. And that’s one of Great Britain’s first colonies in Africa. How about Nigeria? Occupied in 1861. How about Kenya? 1890. Uganda? 1894. Swaziland? 1906. Perhaps you came by your figure of ‘hundreds of years’ by adding up all the years that various individual countries were colonies together. Who knows ?

France’s african colonies were acquired as late as the 1870s, and in the case of Morocco, not until 1912.
Still, it’s always fun seeing how little you know of world history outside the United States.

As for your reference to ‘C.I.A. bogeymen’- if only they were simply figures used to scare children. Post-colonial Africa might have been a more secure place to live. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, through direct C.I.A. intervention in Angola and Ghana and Zaire and elsewhere, this was not the case. Thanks to the activities of the American secret service and America’s proxies, racist Rhodesia (and by the way- saying that Ian Smith’s Rhodesia was a British creation is as logical as saying post 1776 America was a British creation. Rhodesia declared U.D.I. in 1965- Great Britain and the U.N. instituted sanctions, and America gleefully broke them, as it did in South Africa. Great job, U.S.) and apartheid South Africa, the whole of southern Africa was impoverished and destabilised- from direct military intervention in Mozambique and Angola by South Africa, to terrorist attacks and assassinations in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho, Angola, Namibia, and Swaziland.

Instead of concentrating on the economy and trade, infrastructure, health care, and literacy, more and more money had to be spent on bush wars, fighting rebel incursions, repairing the damage done by the likes of Unita and Renamo and the South African secret service and its paramilitary forces. At the same time the U.S. was ‘constructively engaging’ South Africa, South Africa was assassinating the likes of Dulcie September in France and Ruth First in Mozambique. It was also killing more people in the Front Line states than in South Africa- quite an achievement given the apartheid regime’s record against its own people. And yet the U.S. chose to bomb Libya on more tenuous evidence and because of a much smaller death toll. Why wasn’t Nicaragua ‘constructively engaged’? Or Cuba? After all, Nicaragua hadn’t occupied a neighbouring territory as South Africa had with Namibia. And Cuba wasn’t launching repeated terrorist attacks on Mexico, Honduras, Jamaica and Costa Rica.

Still- carry on pretending that the U.S. hasn't been like King Midas in reverse in Africa- every country it touched turning into a disaster area.

[Ted Striker]

Answer me this -- how in the hell did Zimbabwe get a white minority of farmers owning all the land in the first place?

Go to the root of the problem. Everything after that is just noise.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sikander


Washington, which quite frankly didn't care very much about this corner of the world, save that its supplies of strategic metals etc. from South Africa remained unharmed by Soviet clients in neighboring states.

AFAIK the U.S. never supplied arms to RENAMO (there are plenty of pictures of these guys around, and I have never seen them with any other than South Africa / Rhodesian kit or captured Soviet stuff.

I think this is as close to agreement as you and I are going to get on this issue.

Well, Soldier of Fortune not being required reading at university, I never had the chance to scan the doubtless well-researched articles in there. How about this:

"During the raid, a large quantity of weapons and documents were captured. The documents confirmed the fact that Renamo was receiving equipment and arms from South Africa, from the United States of America, and from Portugal. It was also revealed that Renamo was training some Zimbabweans who called themselves the Zimbabwe Resistance Army. Of the arms captured at Cassa Banana, most were of Eastern Block origin. The heavy field guns had all been captured from the FAM. It appears as if the South African forces on whom Renamo relied for weapons, were simply passing on to Renamo the arms they were capturing from Angola. "

http://ccrweb.ccr.uct.ac.za/defenced...fdigest03.html

and this:

"The opposition Resistencia Nacional Mozambicana (Renamo) received weapons from Rhodesia and later from South Africa. Kenya provided ammunition in the late 1980s, and Portuguese, German, American and Gulf sources also provided weaponry. Much of Renamo's weaponry consisted of re-circulated Chinese and Russian light weapons. Renamo also relied heavily in the last years of the war on weapons captured from government forces.

http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Papers/BP25.htm"

and for the more clandestine routes of official and unofficial U.S. support:

“The United States is only one of the distant governments that wink at the arms traffic, particularly if it serves their own geopolitical games or balances out the political playing field. U.S. officials call the pursuit of the military agenda the "African solution to African problems."
Traffickers give foreign governments plausible deniability. Neither France nor the United States wants to be caught red-handed providing direct military aid to client regimes or allies like Burundi, who have committed egregious human rights abuses, or to countries known to have invaded their neighbors, like Uganda and Rwanda.
But drawing the line between covert operations and black marketeering can be tricky. U.S. law enforcement officials were told to look the other way when their investigation of arms networks to the Great Lakes genocidaires overlapped with the activities of "protected" suppliers of the U.S.-sponsored, predominantly Christian-oriented Sudanese People's Liberation Army, which is fighting against the Islamic regime in Khartoum.
The culpability of foreign governments is threefold: they may directly authorize the covert supply of weapons and ammunition or their trans-shipment across their borders (acts of commission); they may turn a blind eye to their nationals who are engaged in illegal arms smuggling, military training, and mercenary activity (acts of omission); or they may be lax in striking against illegality and corruption (neglect). In the Great Lakes region, not a single foreign gunrunner that I have come across has been imprisoned for violating international or local laws, international humanitarian law, arms embargoes, or regional sanctions.

A U.S.-sponsored "evangelical missionary couple" flew military guns supplied by right-wing Americans and South Africans to the "anti-Communist" RENAMO rebels in Mozambique as late as 1994. I recently bumped into them in the Burundian capital of Bujumbura where, under cover of running a Christian medical clinic, they were giving military assistance to their ostensible religious believers. The sponsoring organization receives funds from the U.S. government development agency, USAID.”

Kathi Austin is a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at Stanford University. She is a consultant to the International Crisis Group in Brussels and other human rights organizations.

Ah yes, USAID- like those ubiquitous ‘Soviet trade missions’ in Europe and Africa and Asia, as much to do with aid as intelligence.

“South Africa also played an unsavoury part in this war, supported every step of the way by the U.S. South Africa’s extreme militarism went hand in hand with its white supremacy and overall strategy of destabilization in the southern end of the continent. South Africa backed the contra war in Mozambique that killed or maimed 250,000 and created over one million refugees. South Africa subverted independence in Namibia with its counterinsurgency war. The apartheid military had 120,000 troops stationed in Namibia in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1975, South Africa intervened in Angola with the support of the CIA. The U.S. had traditionally supported South Africa, in large part due to Kissinger’s renowned racist “Tar Baby” policy (NSSM39). “Tar Baby” articulated the U.S. position in Africa: Black Nationalist movements were an unsuitable alternative to continued colonial rule. “Tar Baby” was the impetus behind Washington’s million-dollar sales of military aircraft to the South African government in Pretoria. The South African military was notorious for its brutality—terrorists in every sense of the word. Support from the U.S. gave South Africa’s apartheid terrorists legitimacy. “

Andrew Hartman, ‘The Politicization of Terror’ Z magazine.

Let's not pretend that from the days of Kissinger and Nixon's realpolitik to Reagan's 'constructive engagement' that the U.S. had no interest in southern Africa and the black-ruled front line states in the SADDC- because it simply isn't true. The C.I.A. had a practice of recycling or reusing Soviet bloc and Chinese weaponry in Central America too- they supplied the FMLN with Soviet bloc weapons in order to smear them with a plausible Cuban/Russian connection. Supplies to Renamo also came through some other intriguing conduits- Malawi's autocratic regime, run by one of the few African leaders to maintain diplomatic contact with Israel, Kenya (likewise) Saudi Arabia and Israel. Of course, if caught, the traffickers and the arms could then be said to have come from anywhere else other than the United States- which whilst ostensibly publicly supporting the Nkomati accord was covertly helping South Africa subvert it. Same as in Central America with the Esquipulas and Arias accords. Plus ca change...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Answer me this -- how in the hell did Zimbabwe get a white minority of farmers owning all the land in the first place?

Their ancestors showed up in the late 19th-early 20th century with guns and took it, then created a government that allowed them to keep it. In 1979, after many years of civil war, the Blacks finally defeated the white minority government, and in the peace treaty, Great Britain and the US both pledged to pay Zimbabwe money to help them carry out a land re-distribution program, then renegged.

[Ted Striker]

Their ancestors showed up in the late 19th-early 20th century with guns and took it

Enough said.

How's that for selective quoting.

[Drake Tungsten]

Well, Soldier of Fortune not being required reading at university, I never had the chance to scan the doubtless well-researched articles in there.

Jesus, what a condescending *******...

[Mr. President]

I'm surprised no-one's posted a link to americanstateterrorism.com . . .

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Answer me this -- how in the hell did Zimbabwe get a white minority of farmers owning all the land in the first place?

Go to the root of the problem. Everything after that is just noise.

Oh, gee, ted, I don't know- the same way the United States did? By the way- corporate landholders account for large tracts of the land occupied by tobacco farms in Zimbabwe. Guess which country they come from?

Remilitarizing Africa for Corporate Profit

By John E. Peck

"Total U.S. foreign spending in sub-Saharan Africa under Clinton/Gore has dwindled to a paltry $700 million in 1999—less than $3 per U.S. citizen per year—and a drastic decline from the Reagan/Bush high of $1.8 billion in 1985. During the Cold War (1959-1989), the Pentagon spent in excess of $1.5 billion on direct arms transfers and covert military activities in sub-Saharan Africa alone, supporting brutal dictatorships in Sudan, Uganda, Chad, Zaire, Somalia, and Liberia, as well as pro-apartheid rebels in Angola and Mozambique. Yet, since the demise of the “Communist threat,” the U.S. has continued this sordid trend of bankrolling belligerence in Africa earmarking $227 million for arms sales and training programs between 1991 and 1998, according to a recent World Policy Institute report, “Deadly Legacy.” Between 1991 and 1995, over 3,400 African soldiers received U.S. training, 70 percent of which hailed from dictatorships and other countries in turmoil. Under International Military Education Training (IMET), the U.S. spent $5.8 million training 400 African officers in 1998 alone. Thanks to the Pentagon’s newer Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, 34 out of the 53 countries on the continent now boast U.S. military “graduates,” including 8 of the 9 nations behind both sides of the civil war still raging across Congo. Large quantities of small arms are also being dumped in Africa under Section 516 of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act as Excess Defense Articles (EDA) transfers. Yet, when it came to paying for UN and Organization of African Unity (OAU) peacekeeping operations in Congo to implement the Lusaka Peace Accord, the White House had only $2 million to spare.

Following the example of post-apartheid house cleaning, the U.S. should also convene its own “Truth Commission” to expose and judge Washington policymakers, hell bent to “win” the Cold War, who inflicted so much death and misery on Africa. It’s hard to imagine a worse case of a self-declared democratic superpower shirking its historic obligation to an entire continent and its people. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) has found one sobering maxim from his review of U.S.-Africa policy, which he shared with Congress back in July 1998, “The first rule should be that the U.S. does not give any kind of military assistance whatever to governments that murder their own people.”

John E. Peck is a graduate student at UW-Madison, who has visited Africa many times in the last decade and is also a member of the Association of Concerned African Scholars.

Yeah, all those dictators, arms traffickers, and gem smugglers are just noise. Very expensive noise, in terms of the damage to people and countries and Africa's future. But go ahead, ted, continue to salve your conscience by imagining that somehow the U.S. has been a disinterested bystander in the wreckage of post-colonial African hopes. Just what Africa needs- more guns and more soldiers. Perhaps they're getting the same kind of training those soldiers responsible for atrocities in Central and South America received at the School of the Americas. Kagame's R.P.F. would seem to indicate this- Kagame having received training and support from the U.S.

Ghana at independence had over 1 billion dollars in the bank- the greatest sum in black Africa. After the C.I.A. sponsored coup in 1964, and several more coups following that, the U.S. supported leader, Jerry Rawlings, said in the late 1980s, that Ghana would need a further twenty to thirty years of unrestricted growth simply to match the pre-independence living standards. You go, U.S., you go...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ted Striker


Enough said.

How's that for selective quoting.

If you steal something, your children have no right to it.

[Drake Tungsten]

I'm surprised no-one's posted a link to americanstateterrorism.com . . .

That's a scary site.

[Drake Tungsten]

If you steal something, your children have no right to it.

Do the black children in Zimbabwe have the right to eat? Mugabe's idiotic reforms took that away...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Quote:

Well, Soldier of Fortune not being required reading at university, I never had the chance to scan the doubtless well-researched articles in there.

Jesus, what a condescending *******...

Oh, Drake, you're such a sweet-talker. I have actually read some copies of Soldier of Fortune, and outside the realms of forensic psychiatric literature and biographies of Hitler and Stalin, a better assortment of paranoid fantasists you couldn't hope to meet.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


If you steal something, your children have no right to it.

Well duh.

I don't know what point you're trying to make.

[Ted Striker]

Oh, and by the way,

The British Government formally granted independence to Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980.

Here's a nice link about the history of Zimbabwe for all you ignorant (molly) people:

http://www.rhodesian-chronicle.co.uk...as_history.htm