Category Archives: Libya

Eeben Barlow : the African Nemesis of the Warlords of Westminster and Washington

Angola, British Financial Empire, DRC, EO, History Modern, Kenya, Libya, Mali, mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, The Sudan, Uganda,

This is a two part interview by Al Jazeera with Major General Eeben Barlow, founder of the world`s most successful private military company, Executive Outcomes, and the African nemesis of those who continue to wage war and destabilize the continent of Africa

Source: Al Jazeera English

Eeben Barlow: Inside the world of private military contractors | Talk to Al Jazeera

4 Jan 2020

For years, private armies have provided services to governments around the world. They are often secretive and operate in the shadows.

Blackwater – now known as Academi – is one of the most well-known private armies. It has provided troops and other services to the US government in different conflicts, including the Iraq war.

But it is not always clear how these private armies are formed, where they operate, or even what their missions consist of.

Eeben Barlow is chairman of ‘Specialised Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection International’ – a private army that – according to Barlow – has operated throughout Africa and beyond. He was also behind another similar company that shut down in 1998 – called Executive Outcomes.

And while many argue private armies are mercenaries doing the jobs governments do not want to do – Barlow insists his operations are legitimate and follow international law.

“We don’t see ourselves as mercenaries. We are first of all contracted by a national government. We become part of their armed forces, we wear their uniforms, we follow their procedures and guidelines, we fall under the legal regulations of that country. So, in other words, we serve the country that contracts us. And yes, we get paid for it, but we certainly don’t get paid to run around and cause chaos,” says Barlow.

Some private military contractors have been accused of prolonging conflicts instead of ending them, but Barlow believes that “there is a fine line between moral and immoral”.

“But that really goes back to the people that are involved … We’ve never prolonged a conflict, in fact, we’ve ended them despite them carrying on for decades and decades. We’ve ended them in a very short space of time. But I am aware of companies that do not mind if the conflict continues because that’s the goose that lays the golden egg, and they certainly don’t want to stop it,” says Barlow.

He stresses the importance of cultural understanding and expertise needed to end conflicts across Africa.

“We are after all Africans that work in Africa. But I do think there is a major concern that Africans can actually end African conflicts,” says Barlow.

“We look at all these private military companies going into Africa, they are just charging, they don’t understand the environment they are in, they don’t understand the area of operation, they don’t understand the people and very quickly, they offend people … If they are not going to add value and bring about … stability and peace, then they shouldn’t be there. But unfortunately, this has been allowed to drag on.”

So who makes sure these armies are indeed following international law? How do they operate? And is there accountability?

Eeben Barlow provides an insight into the world of private military contractors as he talks to Al Jazeera about his company’s role in fighting Boko Haram in Nigeria, the LRA in Uganda and other conflicts across Africa.

Part 2

5 Jan 2020

For years, private armies have provided services to governments around the world. They are often secretive and operate in the shadows.

Blackwater – now known as Academi – is one of the most well-known private armies. It has provided troops and other services to the US government in different conflicts, including the Iraq war. But it is not always clear how these private armies are formed, where they operate, or even what their missions consist of.

Eeben Barlow is chairman of ‘Specialised Tasks, Training, Equipment and Protection International’ – a private army that – according to Barlow – has operated throughout Africa and beyond. He was also behind another similar company that shut down in 1998 – called Executive Outcomes.

And while many argue private armies are mercenaries doing the jobs governments do not want to do – Barlow insists his operations are legitimate and follow international law. So who makes sure these armies are indeed following international law? How do they operate? And is there accountability?

Eeben Barlow provides an insight into the world of private military contractors as he talks to Al Jazeera about his company’s role in fighting Boko Haram in Nigeria, the LRA in Uganda and other conflicts across Africa.

 

MONUSCO: “Perhaps it`s Because the UN Doesn`t Want the Conflict to End”

British Financial Empire, DRC, EO, Libya, Rwanda, Uganda, ,

MONUSCO : “Perhaps it`s Because the UN Doesn`t Want the Conflict to End”

image: September 2024 : one of the thousands of children surviving in the IDP camps of North Kivu, DRC. The camps are a result of Paul Kagame`s land clearances

by PD Lawton          23 November 2024

This article is  Part 5 of Sun City and the final chapter of this series which attempts to cover some of the modern day history of the Great Lakes. I should perhaps have written more on the Ugandan based ADF ( Allied Democratic Forces)that operate in North Kivu and Ituri, but the baseline is that all Islamic extremism, and Judeo-Christian extremism, Zionism, is a creation by the City of London . As so ably stated [1] by Bashar al Assad, neo-liberalism and religious extremism are two sides of the same coin.

The series includes:

Part 1 : Sun City, how the Anglo American Network took power in Rwanda and DRC, using Tutsi Supremacists and Minority Rights

Part 2 : The Smoke and Mirrors Game of War in Eastern Congo

Part 3 :UNHCR`s Concentration Camps in Goma :the refugee pawns for Kagame`s war on Congo

Part 4: The Trial of Charles Onana, Will Rwandan History be Criminalized as Hate Speech?

 

I have chosen the words of Major General Eeben Barlow [2] , taken from an interview done by al Jazeera in 2020, to conclude this African story. What is related in the interview indicates that the 800 000 – 1.5 million Rwandans who died between April and July, 1994 and the subsequent 12 million plus Rwandan and Congolese murders that were conducted, and continue to be conducted to this very day,  in the coldest of blood, could have been stopped.

Only God can judge the Roger Winters [3], Tony Blairs, Billie Clintons, Yoweri Musevenis and Paul Kagames of this world for the horror they unleashed.

Eeben Barlow: “Look at a country such as the DRC which is rich in minerals, everybody has an interest in it. A country such as Nigeria, that has oil, everyone is interested in it. So you know the resources that countries have, where it ought to be a blessing is in many cases a curse for those countries.

Interviewer:  I would like to listen to your take on the DRC and what`s happening in the DRC and the MONUSCO?

EB:  I think first of all if you really look at the DRC and the amount of money that’s been put into it to end this conflict, I don`t think it`s been very well spent. I need to point out that the UN has always been very critical of the companies that I have chaired. Perhaps it`s because the UN doesn`t like the conflicts to end. I would like to say that the UN has had a perfect opportunity to end the conflicts but this hasn`t happened. And I really need to understand in my mind why, why they have not been able to end these conflicts.

Eastern DRC is a mineral rich area but it has also become a haven for religious and criminal inspired terrorist groups, liberation movements, whatever you want to call them. And yet the UN has done nothing. However the UN has actually sat and watched people being slaughtered and not gone to their rescue.

And I find if there’s any force claiming to be there to ensure peace, I think these actions are despicable. I cannot understand how people can claim they want to secure peace, and bring about peace when they watch people being slaughtered.

And people cannot tell me the area is too big to control, that is absolute nonsense. And if people say that they are only trying to cover their own inability to do their jobs.

Interviewer: Maybe it is because of the different nature of the two jobs, your job, your company`s job and the job of the United Nations peacekeeping troops because they are out there to keep the peace which is non-existent. Your mission sometimes is to enforce peace.

EB: I hear your argument. However, how do you keep peace between two warring countries? Why hasn`t the UN intervened between General Haftar`s people and the government in Tripoli? Why haven’t they intervened in Syria if they`re so concerned with keeping peace? And do not get me wrong, I am not discounting the UN as an organization but I am saying that there are elements in it that are certainly not doing their jobs. How can you claim to be peacekeepers if you can`t keep peace?

So to me there is just a little bit of a twist on what is happening in there. That conflict could have been ended a long time ago but I think that there is both domestic and international will lacking because there are many companies that are currently in the DRC that are exploiting those mineral resources, illegally, for their own benefit. And under the watchful gaze of the UN. We have seen this happen time and time again. However the UN will target us and single us out yet they hire contractors, they make use of PMCs to clear mines, to help move logistics etc. but no one talks about that. And in that case it tells me there is actually a large amount of hypocrisy going on here.

Interviewer: Let`s expand on this. You always say and let me quote you on this, “PMCs are more efficient and much less costly in bringing conflicts to an end in comparison to the United Nations peace keeping troops”. In light of the UN convention that bans mercenary activities; don’t you think that by privatizing conflicts it can work as a one way train?

EB:  We have never advertised or promoted the idea the idea of privatizing conflict. What I have said is that the input of PMCs into a conflict as long as you are part of that national military can actually end the conflict quicker and cheaper than what the United Nations or others can do.

You know, I would like to take you back to the genocide in Rwanda.

The UN did contact us, no matter how much they deny it.

They called us from Geneva and asked if we could intervene.

We submitted a strategy.

That strategy was developed.

Interviewer: When did that happen?

EB: This was in 1994, 1995. I cannot remember the exact dates of the genocide. It was submitted to the UN. The UN came back and said that we have to procure all of the equipment that we would need, which included the vehicles, the air transport, the medical support, the weapons, the ammunitions, the uniforms etc, etc. The figure came to US$ 100 million if I recall correctly, for a six month period because that`s what we were asked for.

It was declined because it was too expensive

The UN instead tried to do it themselves. That cost US$ 150 million for 6 months and the genocide actually occurred. So you know to me there is a very clear distinction between cost efficiency and just spending money. We have never wasted a government`s money and they have never told us we have wasting their money and we never go into a conflict with our own equipment. We make use of a government`s equipment. So you know the stories that are propagated in the media that we come with helicopters and tanks and heavy equipment are all lies. I cannot swear on camera but it`s rubbish. We make use of what that government has. Certain critical equipment we will ask them to procure but we don’t procure it because it’s that governments equipment but yes we have been much cheaper than what the UN has been and probably ever will be until someone fixes this department of peacekeeping .

 

footnotes:

[1]YouTube channel: vanessa beeley : President Assad interview with CCTV (Eng. subtitles)

[2] Eeben Barlow is the founder of Executive Outcomes and former Chairman of STTEP International. In his recently published book The War for Africa he details a number of highly significant occurrences which he personally experienced that indicate a deliberate obstruction to the resolution of insecurity on the continent of Africa since the start of the Angolan civil war in the mid-1970s. Those experiences over the span of his career encapsulate the story of Africa`s fight for sovereignty. See article by PD Lawton: Prince William in Cape Town: opening a new front for AFRICOM in Central Africa?

[3] on africanagenda : EXPOSING U.S. AGENTS OF LOW-INTENSITY WARFARE IN AFRICA
The “Policy Wonks” Behind Covert Warfare & Humanitarian Fascism by Keith Harmon Snow.

 

 

Ethnic mass killings in one Sudan city last year left up to 15,000 dead: UN report

Chad, Current African News, Libya, The Sudan

re posted from                              PRESSTV

The attacks were planned, coordinated, and executed by RSF and their allied Arab militias,” the sanctions monitors wrote in their annual report. “When reaching RSF checkpoints women and men were separated, harassed, searched, robbed, and physically assaulted.”

The monitors said the RSF takeover of most of Darfur relied on three lines of support, including Arab allied communities, dynamic and complex financial networks, and new military supply lines running through Chad, Libya, and South Sudan.

“Complex financial networks established by RSF before and during the war enabled it to acquire weapons, pay salaries, fund media campaigns, lobby, and buy the support of other political and armed groups,” wrote the monitors, adding that the RSF used proceeds from its pre-war gold business to create a network of as many as 50 companies in several industries.

Ethnic mass killings in one Sudan city last year left up to 15,000 dead: UN report

This image shows the remains of Imam al Kadhim School in El Geneina City, West Darfur State, which came under attack on April 27, 2023 for housing refugees who had been displaced due to fighting between the warring sides in Sudan. (Photo by UN)

Ethnic mass killings in one city alone in the West Darfur region of Sudan have left up to 15,000 dead, according to a UN report.

The UN report seen by Reuters on Friday said between 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed last year in West Darfur State’s El Geneina City.

In the UN report, ethnic violence carried out by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and allied Arab militia fighting Sudan’s Army led by the country’s de-facto ruler, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, was cited as the reason for the killings.

The RSF, however, has previously denied such reports, claiming that if any of its soldiers were found to be involved in ethnic violence, the perpetrators would be prosecuted and face justice.

continue reading HERE: Source:

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/01/20/718577/Sudan-UN-Ethnic-Mass-Killing-RSF-Dagalo

 

 

Trudeau’s great Nazi whitewash / Libya: Obama and Hillary’s war crimes

British Financial Empire, Libya, New World Order,

Source: Australian Citizens Party

CITIZENS REPORT 28/9/2023 – Trudeau’s great Nazi whitewash / Libya: Obama and Hillary’s war crimes

29 September 2023

1. Trudeau’s great Nazi whitewash unravels—is Albanese’s next?

2. Don’t blame Mother Nature for Obama and Hillary’s war crimes

Presented by Robert Barwick and Richard Bardon

La Chronique : l’occident ou la raison du plus fort

British Financial Empire, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Current African News, History before 1900, History Modern, Ivory Coast, Libya, Mali

Why African countries do not need to support the West`s war against Russia

“Lorsqu’il engage une guerre c’est toujours au « nom de la paix, et de la justice dans le monde ». Ses problèmes sont automatiquement ceux du monde et celui qui ne prend pas position pour lui devient un ennemi qu’il faut sanctionner”.

Source: Alain Foka Officiel

La Chronique : l’occident ou la raison du plus fort

12 Juin 2022

Lorsqu’il engage une guerre c’est toujours au « nom de la paix, et de la justice dans le monde ». Ses problèmes sont automatiquement ceux du monde et celui qui ne prend pas position pour lui devient un ennemi qu’il faut sanctionner. Surtout ne pas lui rappeler ses crimes, ses ratées, ses nombreuses guerres qu’il ne remporte presque jamais. Cette fois-ci, avec l’Ukraine, l’Occident n’a jamais été aussi isolé. Mais qui mettra fin à sa dictature de la pensée qui menace plus que jamais la paix mondiale ? Qui lui insufflera l’humilité qui lui fait tant défaut ? Pourtant le Président Macron reconnaît la fin de l’hégémonie occidentale. Il faut le mettre devant sa vérité

Réalisation : Sébastien Faye

Ecrit par Alain Foka

The Imperial Liberal World Order or Sovereign Internationalism? : EIR interview with Dr Richard Sakwa

Belt and Road, British Financial Empire, Current African News, Libya, ,

The Imperial Liberal World Order or Sovereign Internationalism? : EIR interview with Dr Richard Sakwa

“...So when you ask why has Putin acted at this time..…….within the larger question to get an over-arching European security order.So there`s at least 3 levels of conflict : one in the Donbass, one over Ukraine more broadly, its neutrality or its future place in a security order, and then the larger failure of European security. You could even add a fourth, which is that global tension, pressure between the United States`s vision as a global hegemon and the resistance of powers like Russia and China to those hegemonic ambitions.So we are living at the intersection of multiple crises and its not quite clear that if we end up with this crisis escalating to the top level, we`re really talking about a global war.”

“What was most shocking was President Zelensky`s comment at the Munich Security Forum that Ukraine may become a nuclear weapons power. That was shocking enough but what was perhaps even more disturbing was the lack of response of the Western powers, the Atlantic powers, which of course are blocking North Korea and Iran becoming nuclear weapons powers and yet it seemed as if Ukraine was going to be given a free pass.”

“...of course double standards are really the name of the game and they have been for a long time.Obviously when NATO is being talked about as a peace body, a collective defense body only, we have seen the bombing of Serbia in 1999, not to mention the NATO planned invasion of Iraq in 2003, and above all the destruction of the Libyan State in 2011……..In 2008 Libya and Italy signed a developmental agreement, a long term cooperation agreement, Italy of course is the former colonial power, and this did really seem to be the way forward………………all of that was destroyed in 2011.”

Mike Billington: “…Putin also addressed the internal breakdown of key industries, of the economy, and the social structure in his Monday speech. This constrasts, of course, greatly with the Western media argument that the US and NATO are defending freedom and democracy in Ukraine against Russian autocracy….”

“I think Natalia Vitrenko`s analysis is one of the best………….because they have understood the way that the model of post communist capitalism and then the way it has developed since 2014 which has unleashed neo-liberal shock therapy on a society which has already been devastated and pillaged by inequality and indeed by political intolerance. We know that the Communist Party was banned in 2014, a rather shocking development, the Socialist Party, the group that Natalia leads, has been under permanent pressure and of course the Ukraine is one of the few states which , its GDP, both in nominal terms and per capita terms, is lower today than it was in 1991. A shocking development. And whole swathes of industry have died back and the reflection of this dire economic circumstances, very, very expensive services, energy and so on, all pushed by the IMF, has been mass immigration, at least 6 million have gone as labour immigrants.”

“At the end of the Cold War, there were 2 peace orders on offer. Both reasonably good in some ways. The first one was the Gorbechovian version, the one that is based on Charter Internationalism, the Charter of the United Nations and subsequent body of international law built on that and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but the model there is Sovereign Internationalism. Which is good. This is the one that Russia and China pursue. The second model is the hegemonic piece with the expansive liberal , so-called liberal international order, with 2 legs, the economic one and the peculiar model of the economy and of course with NATO. You may say that they deliver certain public goods but it would mean that the rest of the world has to be a subaltern, a sub-ordinate, in some way accepting of the dominance of this Atlantic power system. So these 2 models have been in conflict and this ultimately underlies the conflict to this day.”

” The Belt and Road Initiative and its maritime equivalent is extraordinarilly important because it provides an alternative source of development financing for all those countries who have signed up to it. And it is critisized much in the West for becoming exploitative , becoming a sort of debt trap. Many good studies have demonstrated that this isn`t quite the case. Clearly there have been some issues, but what this has offered …………….It can be transformative. If you have the infrastructure balanced with the social capital, or even forms of social organization that are cooperative, you could call it socialism, you could call it other things but ways in which we have not an exploitative form of development but genuinely where the profits and the work , the dignity of labour, as we used to call it, can manifest itself in combination with this infrastructure.But of course we have seen this huge backlash against the Belt and Road Initiative , the Atlantic powers, Lithuania for example has now left and there`s a whole stack of attack on it because it is a model, an alternative model not just of world power but of an alternative model of world development.”

I am deeply critical of this Global Britain agenda in the way that it has now developed which reflects the worst aspects of which you have just referred. That Global Britain is an archaic project to try to re-establish influence not in the framework of what we talked about just now, peace and development. It is an old fashioned, gun boat diplomacy type attitude which of course has had these enormous deleterious consequences over the years. And when Britain left the European Union, I wanted, and I would love to see, a Global Britain that builds on the sort of ideas we have been talking about, which is the idea of development, of moving beyond militarism, moving beyond this endless attempt at gun boat diplomacy, that gun boat diplomacy of the sort we saw in the Black Sea when that British ship went past the territorial waters of the Crimea. And of course the air craft carrier was being sent off to the Far East, to the South China Sea, to wave the flag. This is a sort of 19th Century behaviour. So this is a worst sort of old sort 19th Century imperialism combined now with 21st Century , how can I put it, the liberal Empire of Capital. Which is exceptionally frightening in all sorts of ways. And one also has to say it is the media in all of this, the media autonomy has become undermined by not only financial interests but the erosion of public debate.

Source: Schiller Institute

Global Britain: An Archaic Project That May Bring Global Nuclear War

28 February 2022

Full transcript available here: https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/20… This is an interview conducted February 25, 2022 by Mike Billington of the Schiller Institute, the LaRouche Organization, and the Executive Intelligence Review, with Dr. Richard Sakwa, a professor of Russian and European studies at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent in the UK. Dr. Sakwa has served as head of that school twice in the past. He is also a senior research fellow at the National Research Institute, the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, and an honorary professor in the Faculty of Political Science at Moscow State University. He’s an author of dozens of books and many articles, a very active participant in both political and academic fora, and is a highly respected spokesman for global cooperation as the only means to prevent war.