[lbo-talk] Bush Funding al-Qaeda Minions

[Joseph Wanzala]

Bush Funding al-Qaeda Minions

US Money Keeps Sudan Extremists Alive

http://www.newsinsider.org/madsta/bush_funding_al_qaeda_minions.html

By W. Madsen
[ Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and 
syndicated columnist. He is author of the forthcoming book Jaded Tasks: Big 
Oil, Black Ops and Brass Plates, and co-author, with John Stanton, of 
America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II, which is available at 
Booksurge and Barnes & Noble.]

03 May 2004
While the Bush administration is evangelistically pursuing its global 'war 
on terrorism', military armaments and training it provides to the Chadian 
military are being used to keep groups liked to al-Qaeda alive in the Sudan. 
Why is the US administration turning the blind eye to the ongoing genocide 
in Sudan's Darfur region, perpetrated largely by al-Qaeda front groups using 
US military equipment? News Insider columnist Wayne Madsen investigates.

Former Chadian ambassador to the United States Ahmat H. Soubiane delivered a 
blistering attack on Chad's President Idriss Deby, a new member of the Bush 
administration's 'global war on terrorism' at a seminar sponsored by the 
Council on Foreign Relations in Washington last month. Questioning Deby's 
plans to amend the Chadian constitution so he can become President for life, 
Soubiane, in an open letter to the people of Chad, urged the ruling party in 
Chad to oppose Deby's plans. Deby reacted to Soubiane's letter by recalling 
him as ambassador to the United States in February, however, Soubiane 
remains in Washington under de facto political asylum.

With the commencement (one year ahead of schedule) of the pumping of oil in 
October 2003 from Chad through the new Chad-Cameron pipeline, a project 
backed by a consortium consisting of Exxon Mobil, Chevron Texaco, Petronas 
of Malaysia, Halliburton, and the World Bank, Deby is adopting the policy of 
oil cronyism of Equatorial Guinea's dictator Teodoro Obiang. Although Deby 
is from the north of Chad, tradition is that the prime minister is from the 
south and vice versa. However, in June 2003, Deby appointed his 
inexperienced nephew as Prime Minister and in January 2004 appointed his 
brother-in-law to head Chad's Central African Bank and, by default, 
president of the 9-member Chadian Revenue Management Oversight Committee, 
which oversees how the oil revenues, which are deposited in an escrow 
account in a London bank, are spent. Deby's family are members of the 
northern Zaghawa tribe, which represents one percent of Chad's population. 
Soubiane fears that Chad will become another Rwanda or Burundi, where a 
small minority ethnic group rules with an iron fist over the majority.

Soubiane criticized recent trends of African presidents who, after their 
mandates end, "trump up reasons -civil war, threats from abroad, domestic 
violence- to remain in power," in effect, becoming presidents for life. 
Soubiane calls this an "African comedy."

Deby has recently become a counterterrorism partner of the United States 
through the Pan Sahel Initiative, a US-European Command program to train and 
equip Sahel countries in the fight against Islamist groups allied to 
al-Qaeda. Soubiane said that while he welcomes the initiative's recent 
success in stopping an Algerian group that infiltrated into Chad from Niger, 
he fears that leaders like Deby are joining the Pan Sahel Initiative for 
their own personal gain.

Chad is receiving US military aid and training under Pan Sahel. However, 
Soubiane cited Deby's involvement in the bloody and near-genocidal 
inter-ethnic fighting in the nieghboring Darfur province of Sudan, which he 
fears will eventually spill over into Chad. Soubiane said the fighting in 
Darfur was initiated by former members of Deby's Presidential Guard who hail 
from the province. To repay his debt, Deby is providing advanced weaponry, 
including all terrain vehicles, fuel, small arms, and anti-aircraft guns to 
the Darfur rebels who are fighting the Sudanese central government. Some of 
Chad's military equipment is being provided by the United States under the 
Pan Sahel Initiative. The Bush administration and its evangelical Christian 
allies have targeted Khartoum's Islamic government by supplying weapons to 
various factions opposed to it. Like Chad, Sudan is also sitting on top of 
huge oil reserves.

US military support for Deby and his allied Sudanese rebels is resulting in 
nothing less than another African genocide, closely approaching those of 
Rwanda and Congo in death toll. The people of Darfur are dying and the Bush 
administration throws gasoline on the flames by granting military assistance 
to the perpetrators of genocide. Representatives of international Holocaust 
and genocide remembrance lobbies urge the world to recall the lessons of 
Europe in the 1930s and 1940s at a conference in Berlin, but remain silent 
on the ongoing genocide in Africa, much of it orchestrated by the "creative 
destruction" neo-conservatives who have infested the Bush administration 
from top to bottom.

Soubiane warned that Deby's allies in Sudan have links to al-Qaeda who may 
be benefiting from US military aid to Deby (US forces have similarly armed 
and trained Albanian and Bosnian Muslim allies of al-Qaeda in the Balkans). 
The Bush administration also conducted high-level trans-Afghan gas pipeline 
negotiations with the Taliban just weeks prior to 9-11.

Citing Chadian involvement in Sudan's genocide, Soubiane cited the fact that 
the mainly Zaghawa rebels in Darfur speak Arabic and French, the main 
languages of northern Chad and not Arabic and English, as do most Sudanese, 
and that one leader of the Chadian-supported rebels, a Mr. Bashir, uses the 
alias "bin Laden." More dots now connect the Bush administration to allies 
of al-Qaeda in Chad and Sudan. It was the same with the Taliban and Albanian 
guerrillas in the Balkans.

Soubiane made clear that Chad is not a fertile ground for Islamist terrorism 
or extremism. This is contrary to what has been said by Bush administration 
officials who support expanding the US military presence in the country. 
Soubiane stressed that, "the Chadian people have learned through experience 
that Islamic and non-Islamic believers must co-exist -an idea that is 
crystallized in the popular consensus in support of a secular government."

Copyright © 2003 by the News Insider and Wayne Madsen

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and 
syndicated columnist. He is author of the forthcoming book Jaded Tasks: Big 
Oil, Black Ops and Brass Plates, and co-author, with John Stanton, of 
America's Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II, which is available at 
Booksurge and Barnes & Noble.


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