Are USAID Funds Being Used for Covert Operations in Central Africa?

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By Georgianne Nienaber (about the author) Page 5 of 6 page(s)

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The Virungas National Park has become the focus of international investigations around white western mercenary operations. Top former U.S. state department officials involved in mining companies now plundering eastern Congo have turned up on the boards of some of the “conservation” organizations involved in the Virungas and other protected areas in Central Africa.

One of these conservation mercenary organizations is Richard Leakey’s Wildlife Direct, a newcomer in Congo that operates under the mantle of the Africa Conservation Fund, a tax-exempt (501-c-3) registered with the Internal Revenue Service.

Gorilla killings in the Virungas increased when Wildlife Direct appeared in the Virungas in January 2007.

One former sate department official involved in the region is Walter H. Kansteiner III, an Africa Conservation Fund board member since the founding of ACF in 2004. Kansteiner was a top-level National Security Agency official in both the William J. Clinton and G.W. Bush administrations.

In 2003 Kansteiner appeared as an expert witness in the U.S. Congressional Hearing before the Subcommittee on Africa of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations titled “Saving the Congo Basin, the Stakes, the Plan.” At the time, Kansteiner was Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs. He formerly served with the National Security Council as director of African Affairs and as an African specialist on the staff of the Secretary of State.

Kansteiner has been a constant presence behind the scenes in Congo’s war since 1996. Kansteiner worked on a strategic minerals task force at the Department of Defense and was Executive Vice President of a commodity trading and manufacturing company specializing in tropical commodities in the developing world: one of these was coltan one of the mineral byproducts of warfare in DRC’s Kivu provinces today.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has the world’s purest and largest deposits of strategic minerals, such as gold, coltan, niobium, cobalt and columbite (columbium-tantalite or coltan). Niobium, coltan, tantalum and cassiterite are found in the Virungas region.

Walter H. Kansteiner III is on the Board of Directors of Moto Gold, now operating in the killing fields of the bloody Ituri district near Lake Albert.

RESOURCE WARS IN CENTRAL AFRICA

One petroleum firm involved in the great lakes region of Central Africa is Heritage Oil and Gas, a Canadian company involved in Kazakhstan, Russia, Iraq, Oman, Kurdistan, Gabon and on Lake Albert—on both sides of the war-torn DRC-Uganda border—where fighting between the Congolese FARDC army and Ugandan soldiers and Heritage Oil guards killed a British Heritage Oil subcontractor on August 3, 2007.

Heritage Oil (Canada) and Tullow Oil (London) are operating around Lake Albert in areas that recently saw major fighting. In mid-August the Uganda government commenced a build-up of troops on the DRC border. Congolese survivors in frontier towns along Lake Albert saw Ugandan military and their “rebel” allies—believed to be troops allied with Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba—marching into Congo with heavy weapons in late August.

By September 5, 2007, UPDF troops—and rebels reportedly aligned with Jean-Pierre Bemba—had occupied the DRC’s oil- and gold-rich Semliki Basin on the western shores of Lake Albert. Heavily armed foreign forces occupied the villages of Aru, Mahagi, Fataki, Irengeti and the Ruwenzori mountains. The international press and the United Nations Observers Mission in DRC (MONUC) remained completely silent about the Ugandan incursions.

By September 8, 2007, Ugandan troops were heavily massed on the DRC border while Kabila and Museveni were signing oil and gold sharing agreements in Tanzania. UPDF forces and “rebel” troops alleged to be Bemba’s remained in DRC as of September 15.

Heritage Oil and Gas is tied to mercenary companies and a long list of shady operators and off-shore subsidiaries and partner companies.

Bechtel Corporation subsidiary Nexant is involved in the oil pipeline being constructed across Uganda to the U.S. military port at Mombasa Kenya.

The Ugandan People’s Defense Forces and Museveni government genocide against the Acholi people of northern Uganda is driven by transboundary petroleum and gold concessions linked to foreign corporations like Heritage, Tullow, and Bechtel.

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Georgianne Nienaber is an investigative environmental and political writer. She lives in rural northern Minnesota, New Orleans and South Florida. Her articles have appeared in The Society of Professional Journalists' Online (more...)

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