THE UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL'S "GANG NAME STYLE"

Another year is coming to an end. Adios 2012, welcome 2013. Before kissing good bye to 2012, on December 31, the United Nations Security Council diplomats offered the civilized world their own “Gang Name Style”, the UN version of the “Gangnam Style").

In its New Year's Eve sanctions against M23 and others, the United Nations Security wrote, among many other things:

“The Mouvement Du 23 Mars (M23) is an armed group operating in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) that has been the recipient in the territory of the DRC of arms and related materiel, including advice, training, and assistance related to military activities. Several eyewitness testimonies state that M23 receives general military supplies from the Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) in the form of weapons and ammunition in addition to materiel support for combat operations.

M23 has been complicit in and responsible for committing serious violations of international law involving the targeting of women and children in situations of armed conflict in the DRC including killing and maiming, sexual violence, abduction, and forced displacement. According to numerous reports, investigations, and testimonies from eyewitnesses, M23 has been responsible for carrying out mass killings of civilians, as well as raping women and children throughout various regions of the DRC (…)     The atrocities committed by M23 against the civilian population of the DRC, as well as M23's forced recruitment campaign, and being the recipient of arms and military assistance has dramatically contributed to instability and conflict within the region and in some instances, violated international law.”

(Full text is available at http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2012/sc10786.doc.htm)

UN Security Council’s “Gang Name Style” is an easy dance. This time no invisible horse is needed; rather, a rope to whip a visible criminal organization called M23 (the recipient of arms and related material, military advice, etc.) while sparing and welcoming Rwanda (the supplier) as the newest member of the UN Security Council. The audience is not 1,000,000,000 viewers; rather almost 7,000,000,000 human beings across the globe.

Now, let’s put our human brain to work. Remember my article “Africanomics 101 for Dummies”? Here’s a follow up. The relationship between a producer and a consumer is similar to the relationship between a supplier and a recipient. In both cases, dependence is the core of the association. Put in dummies’ language: there is no production without consumption and no consumption without production. Likewise, there is no supplier without recipient and no recipient without supplier. So what?  Sanctioning only the recipient is what I call “half-sanction” or “dummy sanction”. So what? Sanctioning both the supplier (Rwanda) and the recipient (M23) is what I call "intelligent sanction" if the genuine intention is durable peace and human welfare in eastern Congo.

We, Congolese, are aware of the necessity to get rid of our own dictator Kabila in a civilized and peaceful manner although he is a by-product of Rwanda’s and Uganda’s invasion of the DRC to get rid of Mobutu in 1997.  I will continue to add my voice to those who advocate for the end of tyranny in the DRC. On the other hand, and on behalf of the Congolese people, I urge the United Nations to take all measures to ensure that the governments of Rwanda and Uganda respect the civilized codes of conduct prescribed in international law and that the current government of the DRC abides by the same principles in its relations with its own people. A bon entendeur, salut!

P.S. * I published this same article on Foreign Policy Magazine at: 

http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/12/31/what_does_2013_have_in_store_for_turtle_bay

** Despite my criticism, I am partially satisfied that the United Nations Security Council retook some of the language contained in Executive Order 13413 (See my December 19, 2012 posting). Executive Order 13413 is more comprehensive because it targets suppliers, middlemen, and recipients in the territory of the DRC of  arms and related material, including advice, training, etc.)

AFRICANOMICS 101 FOR DUMMIES

On December 15, 2012, I wrote an article entitled “Peacekeeping Operations and Foreign Investments for Dummies”. Since then, the United Nations Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, acknowledged for the first time on December 19, 2012 that it was necessary to beef up the UN troops in the DRC and actively include Tanzania in the process. 

(see http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-chief-pushes-regional-deal-end-congo-200136806.html)

Also, a group of intellectuals, including Jacques Chirac, Abdou Diouf, Muhammad Ali, Robert Badinter, Leymah Gbowee, Federico Mayor, etc. issued on December 25, 2012 an open letter to the international community entitled “Au Kivu, on viole et massacre dans le silence (In the Kivu, Rapes and Massacres are Committed in Silence) condemning the Rwanda-backed M23 atrocities on the Congolese soil. They wrote among many things:  "Un drame que la communauté internationale pourrait arrêter. A l'instant. Il lui suffirait de donner l'ordre aux dix-sept mille soldats de faire leur métier et de remplir leur mandat. Leur métier de soldat. Et leur mission de garantir  la paix et la dignité de l'espèce humaine" (Translation : "A drama that the international community could stop. For now, it would suffice to order the 17,000 [United Nations] troops [in the Congo] to fulfill their duty and accomplish their mission and mandate as soldiers. And their mission is to guarantee peace and human dignity”

(see http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2012/12/25/au-kivu-on-viole-et-massacre-dans-le-silence_1810191_3232.html

http://www.leparisien.fr/international/rd-congo-jacques-chirac-et-valerie-trieweiler-se-mobilisent-en-faveur-du-kivu-25-12-2012-2433925.php

Now, I will turn to Africanomics for Dummies. To set the stage, consider Rwanda, governed by dictator Paul Kagame, who’s been running with impunity a lucrative looting and killing business in the Congo for the past 15 years.

First, Rwanda is a country that heavily relies on direct foreign aid to pay its government employees. In fact, foreign taxpayers have contributed 40% of the money needed to run the Rwandan government each year and for the last 18 years. Other governments have been reluctant to depositing money directly into Rwanda’s government’s coffers and have opted to help Rwanda through third-world golden bureaucracies known as Non-governmental Organizations (NGOs)!

Second, Rwanda’s dictator Paul Kagame has used efficiently this two-pipeline money design. This is what I call “strategic rip-off of foreign taxpayers”, which consists of a third world country’s accountable use of foreign taxpayers’ money with the sole purpose of perennial and even eternal reliance on foreign aid!

Third, every Economics 101 student knows that real economic growth is a function of economic output or production. Put simply, the more you produce to meet the demand, the more you grow. Therefore, foreign aid can only produce artificial growth, unsustainable in the middle or long run! So what? Only those who have or would have failed Economics 101 have praised Rwanda’s economic “growth” in the last 17 years!

Fourth, Rwanda’s looting of Congo’s natural resources (coltan, gold, diamonds, tin, coffee, tea, timber, etc.) has only produced artificial economic growth in Rwanda. Once the pipeline of stolen and looted goods from the Congo is shut down, Rwanda’s economy and its dictator Paul Kagame will crumble like a castle made of sand. Looting is NO production. By the way, if looting produced growth, Spain, a country that looted most of Latin America for centuries, should have been now one of the richest countries in the world! No need to read Levitt’s and Dubner’s Freakonomics! Read Jean Kapenda’s Africanomics!

Fifth, there is enough information out there to link the dots by associating the dictatorships of East Africa (Rwanda and Uganda) and Central Africa (the DRC), Rwanda-and-Uganda backed rebels groups in the Congo, and greedy and immoral foreign investors. Some of those investors have even strategically installed their businesses, including smelters in Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania, and Kenya, to efficiently take advantage of the looted and stolen goods from the Congo! Their childish motto to justify the looting of the Congo is that Congo’s resources must serve the development of the entire region! As if Congolese have the moral obligation to bail out Rwanda, Uganda, and any other poor country of East Africa! Africanomics for Dummies!

CONGOLESE SHOULD NOT BAIL OUT RWANDA LET'S STOP THE LOOTING OF CONGO'S RESOURCES

Every day, Ben Affleck is "inspired by the resilience and the determination of the Congolese people who desperately want to live their lives in peace, earn a decent living, and raise their families just like the rest of us". (End of Ben Affleck's testimony before the House Armed Services Committee on December 19, 2012).

Things have been moving positively in recent weeks and days as the levers are being pulled on Rwandan dictator, Paul Kagame. Now is time for more pressure on every single dictator in East Africa and Central Africa to abandon their primitive and medieval lifestyles. We're fed up with seeing them act worse than animals in the 21st century!

It is time to send an even stronger message to Paul Kagame that Congolese do not have an obligation to bail out Rwanda, nor do foreign taxpayers. Some stupid and medieval minds around the world applaud Kagame's government's good use of foreign taxpayers' money. Rwanda's strategic use of foreign taxpayers money has only one purpose: to get more foreign aid and continue indefinitely to rip off the same taxpayers. However, those same paternalistic and fossilized minds erroneously believe that it is the moral obligation of foreign taxpayers to bail out dictators. They're wrong: each country has the moral obligation to bail out itself. Foreign aid must be used in limited circumstances as a reward and incentive to governments that respect human rights and are committed to democracy and the rule of law.

Rwanda has to focus on its own problems: how to get rid of their own dictator Kagame and his band of thieves and asssassins, population control (they can learn from the Chinese!), produce their own goods. What a shame that most coffee from Rwanda is actually coffee looted from the Congo and smuggled into Rwanda! Kagame's government has looted coltan, tin, gold, timber, and countless products from the Congo during the last 15 years. Uganda's dictator, Yoweri Museveni, has done the same thing.

Now, let's say: Basta! Vertig!, Enough! No more! Point Final! Congolese should not bear the burden of bailing out the economies of Rwanda and Uganda and their respective dictators. Ayn Rand would call those tyrants "the looters-by-right of Africa's Great Lakes region"!



http://www.voanews.com/content/eastern-congo-us-ben-affleck-rebels/1568328.html

WHY EXECUTIVE ORDER 13413 IS AN IMPORTANT LAW ENFORCEMENT TOOL

Executive Order 13413 (Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo) pulls the levers on a wide range of criminals. It targets all DRC and foreign criminals involved in acts of violence against the population of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  For example, in Section 1 (E), it targets individuals who

“have directly or indirectly supplied, sold, or transferred to the  Democratic Republic of the Congo, or been the recipient in the territory  of the Democratic Republic of the Congo of, arms and related materiel, including military aircraft and equipment, or advice, training, or assistance, including financing and financial assistance, related to military activities;”

Full PDF text of Executive Order (E.O.) 13413 is available at:

  http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Documents/13413.pdf

PULLING THE LEVERS THROUGH TARGETING M23 LEADERS AND THEIR BACKERS

I applaud the sanctions targeting two M23 Leaders. The U.S. Department of  the Treasury took the right decision at the right time.  Excerpts:

"Sanctions Target Two M23 Leaders for Using Child Soldiers and Engaging in Other Activities Contributing to the Ongoing Conflict in the DRC

The U.S. Department of the Treasury today designated two senior leaders of the Congolese militant group Mouvement Du 23 Mars (M23), Baudoin Ngaruye and Innocent Kaina, pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13413, which targets persons contributing to the conflict in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).  

Baudoin Ngaruye and Innocent Kaina are being designated for their involvement in the recruitment and use of child soldiers in the conflict in the DRC and for being leaders of a group that is impeding the disarmament, repatriation, or resettlement of combatants.  Ngaruye is also being designated pursuant to E.O. 13413 for acts involving the targeting of children in the conflict in the DRC, including through killing, maiming, and sexual violence which violate international law.  On November 30, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) DRC Sanctions Committee added Ngaruye and Kaina to its consolidated travel ban and asset freeze list. 

“M23 leaders Ngaruye and Kaina are responsible for carrying out terrible acts of violence against civilians and children in the DRC,” said Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Director Adam J. Szubin. “We will continue to work with our partners in the international community to bring about an end to this conflict.” "

To read the full  press release from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, go to:

http://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/tg1809.aspx

PEACEKEEPING OPERATIONS & FOREIGN INVESTMENT FOR DUMMIES

Imagine telling the cops to walk their beats and not to intervene as long as the criminals do not endanger people's lives. This equates to giving the green light or carte blanche to criminals to commit all types of crimes and walk free as long as they do not cause any wound to the civilian population. It is like telling them that they can steal, loot, enslave, rape, and do all unimaginable atrocities provided they do not cause any wound to their victims! Unfortunately, this has been the mandate the United Nations gave to its largest mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo! In the DRC, those criminals are the Rwanda-and-Uganda backed rebels whose atrocities have been well documented and publicized enough in recent months throughout the world.

As a criminologist and law enforcement expert, I strongly believe that any United Nations military or paramilitary force must be tasked with enforcing international law through the use of all tools to force belligerent groups to comply with civilized codes of conduct. Therefore, I urge the United Nations to strengthen its 19,000 troops in the Congo so that they can respond with fire any time criminals in uniform, also known as rebels and their foreign backers, violate decent norms of conduct.

On the other hand, the most perverse idea that has been floating in the international community in recent months is that Congolese have the obligation to share their natural resources with their neighbors. In other words, they sustain that the governments of Rwanda and Uganda have to loot Congo’s resources because these two countries are so poor that they rely on international donors to pay their own government employees. This is what we call “neutralization” in criminology. Criminals use neutralization techniques all the time. They tend to justify or rationalize why they steal or commit any crime. I strongly believe that Congolese are intelligent enough to reject any form of justification of predatory lootings of Congo’s natural resources by Rwanda and Uganda during the last 15 years. The truth is that no country in the world has to be forced to accept to be looted, period. It is stupid to camouflage the looting of Congo's resources by calling it "sharing" this time!

Foreign investment will always be welcome in the Congo and we will make it paramount as we get rid of our own dictatorship. Congolese must beware of those “mega investment projects or ideas” for the entire Great Lakes region. Their only purpose is to legalize the looting of Congo’s natural resources. It is sad that some individuals in the world want to replace the term “looting” by “sharing”. Neutralization techniques at work!

UPDATE: The United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon decided, four days after this post was published, that the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the DRC  must be beefed up and that Tanzania, a key transit point for looted goods from the Congo, must be involved. I'm glad the message went through. FOLLOW LINK BELOW for Ban Ki-moon comments:

http://news.yahoo.com/u-n-chief-pushes-regional-deal-end-congo-200136806.html

WE THOUGHT YOU WERE ALREADY DEAD!

There I was telling those encounters in a taxi cab that I was a human right activist and a democracy advocate early in the 1980s against one of the worst dictatorships in the DRC. They recognized me and told me they thought I was already assassinated by the former Zaire's dictator.  The fight must continue until tyranny is wiped out of the African continent, starting with East Africa and Central Africa.

(Part 2)

MY FIGHT AGAINST AFRICAN DICTATORS: AN ENCOUNTER WITH TWO WITNESSES

My fight against African dictators is not new. It spreads over a period of 30 years. I've opposed dictators Mobutu, Kabila, Kagame, Museveni, etc. The following two videos were shot on a 2008 trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (former Zaire). They contain a testimony of those who had the privilege to witness my fight against tyranny in the early 1980s.

(Part 1)

FOREIGN POLICY 101: TO END A NATURAL RESOURCES-DRIVEN WAR, YOU ONLY NEED TO INTERRUPT THE SUPPLY CHAIN

This is what I call "Foreign Policy for Dummies". The Allies learned this lesson very well during World War II, which was also a war about controlling world natural resources via the creation of the Third Reich, meant to last 1,000 years! With the Belgian government in exile in London, the Allies held firmly their grip on the Congo and succeeded in interrupting the flow of industrial diamonds to Germany. Since Congo supplied 76% of all industrial diamonds in the world and being the only place on earth Hitler could get industrial diamonds from, interrupting the supply chain meant the beginning of the end of the Third Reich.  The Allies knew that every German plane, tank, V-2 rocket, submarine and other powerful weapons lost during the conflict would be hardly be replaced. Hitler's stockpiles of Congo's industrial diamonds and other minerals acquired prior to the war dwindled progressively. Early in January 1944, the Allies had gathered enough evidence that Hitler's industrial diamonds stockpiles would be nearing zero in the following six months. That's how D-Day was selected. This is foreign policy for dummies, meaning for those who still don't get it!

Congo's invisible hand in shaping the world as we know it today did not stop there. The Congo supplied the uranium used in the Fat Boy detonated over Hiroshima. General Leslie M. Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, even said: "Without Congo's uranium, the Allies might not have been first with the atomic bomb". Supply chain matters. Disrupting the supply chain of uranium for Germany led to the first Congolese-American atomic bomb!  In today's world, Congo's invisible hand is to be found in almost all cell phones, i-pads, i-pods, laptops, and many other electronic machines and equipment.

Now, let's go back to that very stupid war in Eastern Congo. This is the easiest conflict to end. You do not end it via negotiations; it will not stop through legislation. Again, foreign policy for dummies: the criminal states of Rwanda and Uganda rely on the ports of Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Mombasa in Kenya to export most of their lootings from the Congo. I have proposed a strict control at the borders of Tanzania and Kenya to prevent any entry of stolen goods from the Congo before such goods even reach the port of Dar es Salaam and Mombasa. The United Nations must lend their support to these two countries. Each product (minerals, coffee, tea, cocoa, timber, etc.) must be certified and its point of  origin strictly traced.  Foreign policy for dummies! It's cheap and easy to implement!

I've also proposed an aerial interdiction program and a forward-location base to track and intercept any suspect flight landing and taking off from Eastern Congo. Diamonds and gold are easily smuggled that way from Eastern Congo into Rwanda and Uganda and other foreign countries. What is needed is just a few airplanes and radars! Foreign policy for dummies!

What will happen once this "Jean Kapenda Plan" has been implemented? (1) The end of those stupid wars in Eastern Congo; (2) the collapse of the looting-fueled economies of Rwanda and Uganda and their respective dictators. Those smelters in Rwanda and Uganda will close because the illegal supply chain has been interrupted!   Ayn Rand was right when she wrote in Atlas Shrugged: "When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you, when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed. (3) The active role of the international community in the creation of the Dictator-free Zone (DFZ) in East Africa and Central Africa. There is no doubt about it: the world continues to need and even starve for Congo's natural resources, and the best way to access those riches is not through those stupid wars; rather through legal businesses in the Congo that create jobs and pay taxes. 

I've directed my opinion on the roles of the dictators of Rwanda and Uganda (Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni) in the looting of Eastern Congo. These two gentlemen have also been responsible for the death of over 4,000,000 Congolese in the last 15 years. Call them "African Adolf Hitlers" and you'll be 100% right! However, we have our own dictator in the Congo whom I also oppose and have publicly criticized. The priority now is to end that childish war sponsored by Rwanda and Uganda and start the healing process of the violated people in Eastern Congo. Then, we'll take care of other businesses in the DRC, including how to end Kabila's dictatorship and build a system based on the rule of law, republican values (what I call "democracy elevated"; not chaotic democracy or "dictocracy"), and respect for human rights and lives.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/12/07/the_7_deadly_sins_of_congos_peace_process