full piece at http://www.nytimes.com
May 16, 2001 Chad's Wait for Wealth From Its Oil May Be Long
By NORIMITSU ONISHI with NEELA BANERJEE
KOMÉ, Chad - A dozen men waited under the one giant tree that stood - luckily for them, given the brutal midday sun - just across from the front gate of Exxon Mobil's office here. They were waiting for lunch time, and one of the new Toyota Land Cruisers carrying an expatriate boss, who might, at long last, stop at the gate and offer them work.
A couple of them said they had been here nearly three years. None had worked a single day so far.
Yet many more job-hunters joined them after Oct. 18, the day the presidents of Chad and Cameroon came here with officials of the World Bank and a consortium of three of the world's biggest oil companies - Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Petronas of Malaysia - to begin one of the biggest projects in African history: a $3.7 billion, 665- mile pipeline to carry crude oil from landlocked Chad, through neighboring Cameroon, to the Atlantic coast.
The new arrivals have swelled the population of a village of straw huts that has sprung up next to the headquarters of the project. Its hopeful denizens have named the new village Ça Attend - It's Waiting," in French.
"They tell us to wait - `Wait, wait, be patient' - so we are waiting," said Julien Djimasdé, 31, who has stood at the gate every day since October. "Me? I have not lost hope. We are waiting and hoping that one day luck will smile on us."
A generation ago, the prospect of oil in a desperately poor former French colony like Chad would have been regarded as an indisputable stroke of good luck. But intervening years have bared an enduring paradox: sudden wealth does not lift poor nations out of their poverty, but instead creates societies afflicted with a wealthy, corrupting elite, and widespread poverty that caused endless conflict. [snip]
http://www.house.gov/mckinney/news/pr010416.htm Covert Action in Africa: A Smoking Gun in Washington, D.C.
April 16, 2001
Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney OPENING STATEMENT
I want to thank you all for coming today.
I especially want to thank our esteemed speakers for traveling in some instances quite a long way, to be with us today.
Our speakers are courageous individuals who have gone to many of Africa's most dangerous and desperately poor locations, not for wealth or riches, but in order to merely discover the truth. They provide us with a remarkable insight into what has gone on in Africa and what continues to go on in Africa today.
Much of what you will hear today has not been widely reported in the public media. Powerful forces have fought to suppress these stories from entering the public domain.
Their investigations into the activities of Western governments and Western businessmen in post-colonial Africa provide clear evidence of the West's long-standing propensity for cruelty, avarice, and treachery. The misconduct of Western nations in Africa is not due to momentary lapses, individual defects, or errors of common human frailty. Instead, they form part of long-term malignant policy designed to access and plunder Africa's wealth at the expense of its people. In short, the accounts you are about to hear provide an indictment of Western activities in Africa.
That West has, for decades, plundered Africa's wealth and permitted, and even, assisted in slaughtering Africa's people. The West has been able to do this while still shrewdly cultivating the myth the that much of Africa's problems today are African madeówe have all heard the usual Western defenses that Africa's problems are the fault of corrupt African administrations, the fault of centuries-old tribal hatreds, the fault of unsophisticated peoples rapidly entering a modern high technology world. But we know that those statements are all a lie. We have always known it.
The accounts we are about to hear today assist us in understanding just why Africa is in the state it is in today. You will hear that at the heart of Africa's suffering is the West's, and most notably the United States', desire to access Africa's diamonds, oil, natural gas, and other precious resources. You will hear that the West, and most notably the United States, has set in motion a policy of oppression, destabalisation and tempered, not by moral principle, but by a ruthless desire to enrich itself on Africa's fabulous wealth. While falsely pretending to be the friends and allies of many African countries, so desperate for help and assistance, many western nations, and I'm ashamed to say most notably the United States, have in reality betrayed those countries' trustóand instead, have relentlessly pursued their own selfish military and economic policies. Western countries have incited rebellion against stable African governments by encouraging and even arming opposition parties and rebel groups to begin armed insurrection. The Western nations have even actively participated in the assassination of duly elected and legitimate African Heads of State and replaced them with corrupted and malleable officials. Western nations have even encouraged and been complicit in the unlawful invasions by African nations into neighboring counties.
These accounts today are a public indictment of European and American governments and businessmen. Something must be done to right these wrongs. Something must be done to restore Africa to peace and prosperity.
I invite you to listen and learn first hand of the West's activities in Africa.