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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