George Bush's "Heart of Darkness" --
Mineral Control and Africa


by The Staff of the Executive Intelligence Review

Printed in the Executive Intelligence Review, January 3, 1997


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Contents:


Introduction
by Jeffrey Steinberg

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       On Dec. 1, 1996, former President George Bush gave an 
interview to {Parade} magazine, in which he stated: ``I 
don't want to be at the head table anymore. I care about 
being a good citizen. I don't join boards of directors, 
and I don't go into business deals. I've had every 
opportunity to join in putting a petrochemical plant in 
Kuwait, a chance to make money. I haven't done it. The way 
I make a living is giving speeches. Get paid a lot of 
money for giving a speech. No conflict of interest.'' 
        This statement was an outright lie; a lie that Sir 
George Bush arranged to appear in the pages of a weekly 
newspaper insert that reaches millions of households in 
every part of the United States. George Bush does, indeed, 
have a very important foreign corporate affiliation: In 
May 1995, the Canada-based Barrick Gold Corp. created an 
international advisory board around the personal 
leadership of Bush, and Bush was designated ``honorary 
senior adviser'' to that board--a legal fiction to 
disguise the former President's active role as chief 
business developer for the company. 
        What, then, is Barrick Gold Corp.? 
 
             - The destruction of Africa - 
        It is understandable that Bush did not wish to 
advertise his ties to Barrick. The company is not only an 
important corporate element of the London-centered Club of 
the Isles and the British global raw materials cartel--a 
British link that might prove embarrassing to Sir George, 
at a point when Anglo-American relations remain at a low 
point, and when British propaganda organs are leading an 
all-out assault upon the U.S. Presidency. But, Barrick, 
along with the South Africa-based Anglo American Corp., is 
engaged in a strategic metals grab in Central Africa, 
which is being abetted by the greatest genocide per capita 
in modern times. 
        From April 1993, when Uganda's President Yoweri 
Museveni, on behalf of London, launched the genocide of 
the Hutu majority in Rwanda, through to the ongoing 
invasion by the same Museveni-led forces in eastern Zaire, 
Central Africa and the Horn of Africa have been turned 
into a killing field. Local, British-sponsored 
``countergangs'' have been unleashed to depopulate a 
region that possesses the world's richest strain of 
precious metal deposits, while a string of Club of the 
Isles metals cartels, including Barrick, moves in for the 
kill. 
        As you will read below, the invasion of eastern 
Zaire, by the combined armies of Rwanda and Uganda, which 
began in September 1996, coincided with the Barrick and 
Anglo American metal grabs in the very same area. The net 
result of the invasion, and the simultaneous launching of 
an ``internal'' rebellion by longtime British provocateur 
Laurent Kabila, was the depopulating of a string of camps 
that were holding Rwandan Hutu refugees. Thousands of 
those refugees were killed in the fighting between the 
British-backed invaders and French-supported Hutu 
guerrillas; at least another quarter of a million refugees 
were driven into the wilderness, to face death by disease 
and starvation; and another half a million fled back 
across the border into Rwanda, to face likely 
extermination at the hands of the Tutsi. 
        {EIR} first exposed this policy of genocide on Aug. 
19. 1994, in a cover story titled ``The British Hand 
Behind the Horror in Rwanda.'' Then, on Oct. 28, 1994, in 
a {Special Report} titled ``The Coming Fall of the House 
of Windsor,'' we revealed the existence of the 
secretive Club of the Isles, the House of Windsor-led 
oligarchical institution centered upon a tightly knit 
alliance of European princely families, London-based 
financial and insurance houses, and food and raw materials 
cartels. The Club of the Isles in turn deploys the 
resources of the global environmentalist movement, headed 
by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF, formerly the World 
Wildlife Fund), and its funding arm, the 1001 Club, as a 
propaganda and paramilitary arm of their one-world ``New 
Dark Age'' agenda. 
        Under the WWF umbrella, the British Crown has 
built up a string of strategically located nature 
preserves and national parks, which serve as 
staging grounds for cross-border incursions, as training 
grounds for terrorist gangs, and as command posts for 
British ``former'' SAS commandos to direct the killings in 
every part of sub-Saharan Africa. 
        As we document below, in joining the advisory board 
to Barrick Gold, and throwing his political clout into 
facilitating Barrick's worldwide strategic metals grab, 
George Bush, has cast his lot with a collection of very 
unsavory characters, including Barrick's chairman, Peter 
Munk, and with the entire Canadian Bronfman gang. 
        Barrick and the South African Oppenheimer family's 
Anglo American Corp. are at the cutting edge of a Club of 
the Isles drive to recolonize a severely depopulated 
African continent, by busting up the post-colonial 
nation-states, beginning with Zaire; and then creating 
privately owned micro-states, in which what is left of the 
indigenous population is impressed into slavery. The 
novelist Joseph Conrad described these conditions 
graphically in his 1899 book {Heart of Darkness}. Unless 
the oligarchy is stopped, Bush and his friends intend to 
reimpose those conditions. 

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British-backed the mining companies are stealing Zaire's patrimony
by Richard Freeman

       When the forces of Uganda's President 
Yoweri Museveni overran eastern Zaire in October 1996, 
under the guidance of Baroness Lynda Chalker, the head of 
Britain's Overseas Development Office, this military phase 
was the culmination of an invasion of Zaire which had been 
ongoing for the past three years: the theft of Zaire's 
wealth and patrimony. Zaire, as a nation, is being 
dismembered. Its various energy-rich provinces, including 
Shaba and Kivu, are being encouraged to form separate 
micro-states. Already, because of the economic dislocation 
forced on Zaire over the past seven years, most of the 
provinces act semi-autonomously from the central 
government; for example, Shaba province issues its own 
currency. 
        In the following report, we document some of the most 
important features of this genocidal looting operation. 
        On Sept. 21, 1996, a tiny Toronto, Canada-based raw 
materials company, Banro Resources Corp., obtained the 
concession to mine gold in Zaire's central-east province 
of Kivu. The rich concession starts in the town of Bukavu, 
and extends southward. Bukavu was the site of one of the 
major Rwandan refugee camps in Zaire, which was teeming 
with half-starved women and children. Banro needed this 
site cleared of people to begin its mining operations; the 
clearing started with Uganda's invasion of Zaire in 
mid-October. Banro appears to be a cutout for the Anglo 
American Corporation, which is the world's biggest mining 
company, and a key cog in the international oligarchy's 
Club of the Isles raw materials cartel. 
        In August 1996, Toronto-based Barrick Gold obtained a 
gold mining concession in Zaire's northeast province, Haut 
Zaire, which reportedly covers 83,000 square kilometers. 
The Hollinger Corp.-allied Barrick is chaired by Peter 
Munk, and its strategy is shaped by the international 
intelligence network of former U.S. President George Bush, 
who is honorary senior adviser to its international 
advisory board. 
        Also during 1996, the tiny Vancouver-based raw 
materials company Consolidated Eurocan, headed by 
international wheeler-dealer Adolf Lundin, began work on 
exploiting the Tenke-Fungurume copper-cobalt mines in 
Zaire's southernmost Shaba province, near the border with 
Zambia, which has the richest cobalt reserves in the 
world. Cobalt is a strategic metal, crucial in forming 
alloys with steel and other metals, giving them great 
strength and heat resistance. Some 40% of cobalt's use is 
in aircraft gas turbine engines, and 10% is in magnetic 
alloys. Consolidated Eurocan is purchasing the mining 
property in phases, for a quarter of a billion dollars, 
which is a ``song,'' for a property that could yield many tens 
of billions of dollars in revenues. Consolidated Eurocan 
is in a joint venture in this deal with Anglo American. 
        Simultaneously, over the past 18 months, the 
American-based, Canadian-run American Mineral Fields, of 
former DeBeers Diamond executive Jean-Raymond Boulle, has 
obtained the Kipushi zinc mines in Shaba province, one of 
the largest sources of zinc in the world; the Vancouver- 
and Cayman Islands-based Panorama International has 
obtained significant cobalt holdings in Shaba province; 
and, Zaire's diamond company, MIBA (Zaire is one of the 
three largest diamond producers in the world), has been 
thrown open to bidding and takeover by foreign firms. 
 
            - The `Second Great Scramble' - 

        When Maj. Gen. Paul Kagame, the Rwandan defense 
minister, recently called for a new Berlin Conference to 
set new borders for African states--referring to the 
1884-85 Berlin Conference of the imperialist powers which 
ratified the national borders that are now in effect in 
Africa--he had in mind the fragmentation of Zaire into 
mini-states as a paradigm for all of Africa. 
        The first Berlin Conference occurred during what was 
called the ``Great Scramble,'' during the 1880s and 1890s. 
Imperialist Britain and France led the way, and were 
joined by Belgium, Italy, and Germany, in grabbing up the 
raw material wealth of Africa. The Berlin Conference 
codified the Congo, which included present-day Zaire, as 
the personal property of Belgium's King Leopold II. 
Leopold II worked the Congo like a plantation, with brutal 
methods. For example, Congolese Africans who did not meet 
their production quotas had their arms amputated. 
        This time around, the British are making a move to 
push the Belgians and French entirely out of Central 
Africa, and, at the same time, they don't want to have the 
expense of running a nation-state, an institution that 
they don't like anyway. Rather, they deploy the companies 
of their global raw materials cartel to buy up sections of 
a country. They keep the people needed to run the mining 
and related enterprises alive at subsistence levels, and 
the rest of the population is treated as useless eaters, 
left to starve or be butchered. 
        Driving the British actions this time, is another 
``Great Scramble.'' The international financier oligarchy, 
grouped around the House of Windsor, knows 
that the world financial bubble--which they themselves 
created--cannot be sustained, and will burst. They are 
getting out of paper financial instruments and into hard 
commodities: precious metals, such as gold; strategic 
metals, such as cobalt and tantalum; base metals, such as 
copper and zinc; energy supplies; and increasingly scarce 
food supplies. They want to either own the physical 
assets, or, better still, own the mine production facility 
for these assets. As the price of the hard commodity asset 
goes up, the oligarchy makes super-profits. At the same 
time, they have finger-tip control over the minerals, food 
stuffs, and so on upon which human life depends. They plan 
to exercise a food- and raw materials-control dictatorship 
in a post-collapse world. 
        The international oligarchy already owns extensive 
raw materials holdings. But they now seek to obtain those 
holdings in Africa, Ibero-America, and Asia, which they 
don't control. 
        Mineral-rich Zaire is in their target sights. Zaire's 
mineral belt is located in the eastern and southern part 
of the country (see {{Figure 1}}). It is a crystalline 
belt that runs alongside the Great Rift, a geological fault 
running from the Jordan River Valley in the Middle East, 
south through the Gulf of Aqaba, through Central Africa 
(where Zaire is located), down to southern Africa. 
 
     - IMF, World Bank, financiers cut off credit - 

        Most of Zaire's raw materials holdings are owned by 
the state, and President Mobutu Sese Seko has resisted 
selling them to foreigners. A seven-year campaign, 
including a total credit and aid cutoff of Zaire, has been 
waged to force Mobutu to give in. At the center of the 
campaign has been the International Monetary Fund (IMF), 
the World Bank, and the international banks, which are run 
by the same oligarchical forces that run the global raw 
materials cartel. 
        On June 29, 1960, Zaire obtained its independence 
from Belgium, although, as with many African countries, it 
was only a partial independence, because the countries 
were kept in economic backwardness. In the case of Zaire, 
in 1961, its first elected President, Patrice Lumumba, was 
assassinated. Mobutu, who had been an Army general, was 
made President in 1965. In 1967, he declared that all the 
minerals in Zaire's subsoil belonged to Zaire, and 
nationalized the foreign mining holdings, which meant 
principally Belgium's two all-powerful companies, Union 
Miniere and Societe Generale. According to 
one source, ``The Belgians were so angry at Zaire that they 
took with them all their records and plans needed to 
mine.'' 
        Despite difficulties, and while never enjoying true 
economic developments that would have brought a decent 
standard of living to Zaire's now 40 million people, Zaire 
nonetheless was able to harness and mine some of its 
immense raw materials wealth. A sample of what Zaire 
accomplished can be gleaned from the report of the 
{Minerals Yearbook}, published by the Bureau of the Mines 
of the U.S. Department of Interior (Vol. III). In 1988, 
among the world's raw materials mining countries, Zaire 
held the following rank, for the following commodities: 
 
        Cobalt   --  world's largest producer and exporter 
        Diamonds --  2nd in the world 
        Copper   --  5th in the world 
        Tin      --  12th in the world 
        Zinc     --  20th in the world 
 
        Zaire also mined other commodities, such as 
barite, boron, magnesium, and gold. Because of 
historical ties, Zaire shipped a good amount of these 
goods to Belgium. In the 1960s, in order to run its mining 
operations, Zaire created the state-owned La 
Generale des Carrieres et des Mines du Zaire, 
which is known by its acronym, Gecamines. One of its other 
important state-owned companies was based in Kivu 
province, the Societe Miniere et Industrielle de 
Kivu, known by its acronym Sominki. 
        When Belgium granted Zaire independence, it 
bequeathed to Zaire about $5 billion in debt, which 
Belgium had run up. By the late 1980s, Zaire's debt stood 
at about $8 billion--a large debt for a small economy 
based on raw materials and food, but no manufacturing. 
Zaire got further and further behind on its debt payments, 
and finally defaulted on most of it in the early 1990s. 
        This was the excuse that the banks wanted. They 
demanded that Zaire pay the debt, but also, joined by the 
World Bank and others, demanded that Zaire ``democratize'' 
its government and, especially, privatize its state-owned 
raw materials mining concerns. Privatization had three 
components: slashing the social services provided to 
miners by law, laying off half the workforce at Gecamines, 
and selling more than half of the different properties of 
Gecamines and Sominki to foreign investors. Secessionist 
movements were started in Shaba province; the net effect 
would be to dismantle the Zairean state. 
        The banks organized an international credit cutoff, 
meaning that Zaire could not get the money to purchase 
mining machinery, spare parts, and other essential 
imports. The West had always denied Zaire technology 
transfer, as long as the raw materials wealth was 
primarily in Zairean hands. Around 1993, the World Bank 
and IMF declared a credit cutoff to Zaire. A senior source 
at the U.S. Geological Survey reported on Nov. 27, 1996, 
that the World Bank and its loan guarantee agency, the 
Multi-Lateral Investment Guarantee Corporation (MIGA), 
recommended to Zaire that it would not get new money until 
it agreed to ``modernize,'' that is, privatize, its mining 
operations, by selling off sections of state holdings. 
        At about the same time, the governments of Belgium, 
France, and the United States cut off all official 
government aid to Zaire. 
        Currency warfare was unleashed in 1990, and has 
continued to this day. At one point, the Zairean currency, 
the zaire, depreciated from a few new zaires to the 
dollar, to 3,250 to the dollar. This devaluation meant 
that Zaire earned almost nothing for its foreign exports. 
        As the U.S. Geological Survey source explained, ``The 
economy went down the tubes. Mining production today is 
10% of what it was in the late 1980s. Because of the 
economic dislocation, most of the provinces are operating 
on their own.'' Indeed, between 1987 and 1993, cobalt 
production fell 82%, and copper production fell 90%. As a 
result, exports of minerals and metals, which accounted 
for three-quarters of Zaire's foreign exchange earnings, 
dried up. Zaire's ability to service the debt, should it 
choose to do so, disappeared. 
        The conditions of life for the population worsened, 
in a country in which living conditions were already bad. 
In 1990, only 39% of Zaireans had access to safe drinking 
water. Infrastructure is virtually nonexistent. In 1994, 
Zaire's infant mortality rate was 111 deaths per 1,000 
live births, i.e., an 11% infant death rate, more than 13 
times that in the United States. In 1992, the last year 
for which figures were available, 335,000 Zairean children 
under the age of five died. In 1994, life expectancy in 
Zaire was 53 years, lower than in 1990. 
        Under this assault, President Mobutu opened the door 
to privatizing Zaire's patrimony, although still not at a 
rate fast enough to satisfy the World Bank vultures. 
 
               - The corporate invasion - 
        At the heart of the invasion of Zaire's mining 
properties, are the Canadian mining companies and the 
Oppenheimer family-run Anglo American Corp., which often 
takes the Canadian companies under its wing in joint 
ventures. The Canadian mining companies started an 
invasion of Zaire in 1994, which reached a flood tide in 
1996. This was the opening shot of the ``Second Great 
Scramble.'' The Canadian mining companies represent forward 
beachheads for the Commonwealth-centered British Empire 
(see {EIR Special Report,} May 24, 1996, ``The Sun Never 
Sets on the New British Empire''). Behind the companies, 
lurks the shadowy presence of the Oppenheimer family's 
Anglo American Corp., the linchpin of the Club of the 
Isles' raw materials cartelization strategy. 
        We look at three examples. First, the takeover of 
Sominki, in Kivu province, by Toronto-based Banro Resource 
Corp. 
        Zaire has three eastern provinces: Haut Zaire, in the 
northeast; Kivu, in the center-east; and Shaba (formerly 
Katanga), in the southeast. Kivu province is second in 
richness of raw materials, after Shaba. The leading mining 
concern in Kivu is the Societe Miniere et 
Industrielle de Kivu, or Sominki. Sominki was formed in 
1976 as an amalgamation of nine companies that had been 
operating in Kivu province since the early 1900s. It 
operates 47 mining concessions, encompassing an area of 
10,271 square kilometers. 
        In 1996, Banro Corp. of Toronto bought 36% of 
Sominki, raising some of its money for the purchase by 
floating shares in Singapore. Banro was previously a small 
financial institution, with little apparent aptitude for 
mining. The impression is that it was reconfigured as a 
company for the special purpose of this purchase, perhaps 
acting as a front for someone. (Who that someone is, will 
become clear.) 
        Another large chunk of Sominki was bought by the 
Belgium-based company Mines D'or du Zaire, or MDDZ. Owning 
60% of MDDZ is Cluff Mining Co. of London, and controlling 
65% of Cluff is Anglo American Corp., the world's largest 
mining company and a key component of the Club of the 
Isles. 
        On Sept. 21, 1996, Banro and MDDZ announced their 
merger, with Banro selling its shares to MDDZ. The new 
Banro-MDDZ company consolidated a 72% stake in Sominki, 
while the government of Zaire holds 28%. The Banro-MDDZ 
entity has announced that it plans to acquire that 28% 
from the government. The overall enterprise is essentially 
a vehicle for Anglo American. 
        According to various Banro corporate reports and news 
releases, Banro was anxious to get its mining operations 
started as quickly as possible. However, the Sominki 
mining zone that Banro acquired started in the town of 
Bukavu, the center for the major camp for Rwandan refugees 
who had fled to Zaire, with nearly a million people. To 
get mining started, the entire zone would require 
clearing. Suddenly, as Uganda launched its invasion of 
eastern Zaire, near Bukavu, in mid-October, there was 
firing on the Bukavu refugee camp, supposedly against 
``Hutu rebels'' who were hiding there. The military attack 
on the camp forced hundreds of thousands of refugees to 
flee Kivu province, back to Rwanda. But, who did the 
firing? While a clear answer is not forthcoming, it may 
have involved portions of the newly acquired Sominki 
apparatus itself. For, in acquiring Sominki, Banro did not 
just acquire a company; it acquired the effective 
governmental structure of the entire Kivu province. 
        According to a Banro corporate press release, 
``Sominki owns an extensive infrastructure which includes 
repair shops, machine shops, electrical shops and a large 
fleet of Land Rover vehicles. In addition, it operates six 
hydroelectric sites, a number of air strips, and 1,000 
kilometers of roads. Sominki is virtually self-sufficient. 
The company has about 5,000 employees.'' The release added, 
``In fact, Sominki is {the de facto government providing 
all the essential services for the Kivu Province}'' 
(emphasis added). 
        Banro/Anglo American effectively stole a good chunk 
of the government of Kivu. This is the British 
model for the Second Great Scramble. As a mining 
company, Sominki has its own explosives supplies and 
access to weapons, i.e., it has the capability to carry 
out such an attack, or is in a commanding position to 
influence, those who fired on the refugee camps. 
        The second example, is that of American Mineral 
Fields (AMF), which is based in Hope, Arkansas, but run 
from Canada. AMF has acquired from Gecamines the Kipushi 
copper-zinc mine, one of the world's premier copper-zinc 
mines, located in Shaba province (copper and zinc are 
often mined together). The Belgians developed Kipushi and 
began mining in 1925. At its peak in 1988, the Kipushi 
mine produced 143,000 tons of zinc, and 43,000 tons of 
copper. Its total known and probable reserves stand at 22.6 
million tons, grading 2.1% copper and 13.8% zinc. 
        AMF is the brainchild of its owner, Jean-Raymond 
Boulle, a former executive for DeBeer's Diamonds. In turn, 
AMF signed an agreement with Anglo American, which allows 
Anglo American to invest up to $100 million in any AMF 
venture in Shaba province, representing up to a 50% equity 
stake in the venture, including the Kipushi mine. Once 
again, ubiquitous Anglo American shows up. 
        The third example, is that of tiny Consolidated 
Eurocan of Vancouver. In 1996, Eurocan finalized a deal 
that will allow it to purchase from the state mining 
company Gecamines, a 55% interest in the Tenke-Fungurume 
copper-cobalt deposits. Eurocan will pay a quarter of a 
billion dollars over 72 months for its stake, but the 
stake is worth potentially tens of billions of dollars in 
revenues. According to a Eurocan spokesman on Dec. 18, 
Tenke-Fungurume, located in Shaba province, represents the 
largest operating cobalt reserves in the world. It has 
geological reserves of 222 million tons of copper and 
cobalt, with potential reserves of 1 billion tons. 
        Consolidated Eurocan is owned and run by Canadian 
wheeler-dealer Adolf Lundin. One U.S. mining source 
reported, ``There is no way that Eurocan can develop the 
mines on its own. It doesn't have the capabilities. It 
will have to sell off shares to established mining 
companies, most likely Iskor and Gencor, to work the 
properties.'' Iskor and Gencor are both South African 
companies, and part of the British raw materials cartel. 
        Thus, these Canadian companies, in some cases 
stalking horses for Anglo American, are gobbling up 
Zaire's gold, copper, zinc, and cobalt reserves. 
        Add to this, the Barrick Gold purchase of a huge 
concession in Haut Zaire, and the fact that there is now 
discussion of opening up the major government-owned 
diamond mining company, Societe Miniere de 
Bakwanga (MIBA), to foreign investors. MIBA accounts for 
40% of Zaire's official diamond exports. The remaining 60% 
are developed by artisanal miners, i.e., prospectors, who 
then sell the gems to ``Israeli diamond buyers and to 
[international gem dealer] Maurice Templesman,'' according 
to a knowledgeable source. The Belgian-born Tempelsman, 
who squired around Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis before she 
died, is an international tycoon. He is former president 
of the U.S. Africa Society, a group that is influential in 
the shaping of U.S. government Africa policy. 
 
            - The Anglo American paradigm - 

        Anglo American Corp. offers a foretaste of how a 
world without nation-states, run by the financier 
oligarchs, would operate. It was formed in 1917. Financing 
for, and investments into Anglo American and its 
associated companies, came from the Rothschild bank and 
J.P. Morgan. The South Africa-based Anglo American, 
through cross-ownership shares, owns DeBeers Centenary and 
DeBeers Consolidated (which together control the Central 
Selling Organization, that markets and controls 80% of the 
world's diamonds), and the Luxembourg-based Minerals and 
Resources Corp. (Minorco) mineral holding company. In 
South Africa alone, Anglo American owns more than 1,600 
companies, where it is the world's leading gold producer, 
the world's leading platinum producer, the world's leading 
diamond producer, and much else. 
        The Oppenheimer family runs the Anglo American Corp. 
empire. Cambridge University-educated Harold Oppenheimer 
was chairman until 1982, and still reportedly makes all 
important decisions. His son Nicholas is the leading 
family member in the company. The Oppenheimer family 
members are in the 1001 Club, the tightly knit, elite 
society that brings together oligarchs, financiers, raw 
materials company executives, and billionaires to 
coordinate strategy worldwide. Barrick Gold chairman Peter 
Munk is a member of the Club, as are many other heads of 
the world's top mining companies. The Club is closely 
intertwined with the World Wide Fund for Nature of 
Britain's Prince Philip. 
        Though the Oppenheimers publicly professed to be 
critics of South African apartheid, they fundamentally 
supported and benefitted mightily from its existence, 
which allowed them to run their mines as slave-labor 
plantations. 
        But the Anglo American Corp. empire extends to every 
mineral-producing country in Africa and the world, and it 
continues to grow. In October 1996, Anglo upped to 26% its 
ownership stake in the London-headquartered, Zimbabwe 
(formerly Rhodesia)-centered Lonrho raw materials company, 
which had been run by Tiny Rowland. In turn, Lonrho owns a 
30% ownership stake in the Ashanti Mines in Ghana, which 
represents the richest operating goldfield outside of 
South Africa. Anglo American has been trying to purchase 
the state-owned CVRD company of Brazil, which controls the 
Gran Carajas mining project in Brazil. With everything 
from iron and copper to precious minerals, some estimates 
put its worth at more than $1 trillion. According to one 
report, Anglo American is trying to buy what remains of 
Zaire's Gecamines, after everything else has been sold 
off. 
        But the full global reach of Anglo American only 
becomes clear when viewed in conjunction with the holdings 
of the London-based Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ), the world's 
second largest raw materials producing company. RTZ was 
formed in the 1870s by China opium trader Hugh Matheson, 
who was a principal in the Hongkong-based firm Jardine 
Matheson. The Rothschilds have a significant stake in the 
company. Queen Elizabeth II is also a significant investor 
in RTZ. Anglo American and RTZ combined control a stunning 
percentage of the Western world's most important raw 
materials (see {Table 1}). 
        The Anglo American-RTZ combination anchors the House 
of Windsor's raw materials cartel. {EIR} showed in its 
Sept. 15, 1995 issue, that the House of Windsor cartel 
controls, overall, 59.5% of world gold production, 78% of 
world platinum production, 25% of copper, 55% of alumina 
bauxite, 64% of cobalt, 42% of manganese, 39% of chromium, 
and so on. 
        Thus, Anglo American and the Canadian companies 
integrated into the process of taking over Zaire, are out 
to extend the power of the raw materials cartel. If they 
succeed, there will be no nation-state: Only a portion of 
the population, that permitted to slave for the mining 
companies' operations, will remain; the rest will be 
written off. As is shown by the treatment of the Rwandan 
refugees in Kivu province, who were either starved, 
butchered, or simply moved away to make way for mineral 
production, the mining companies do not care about human 
lives, only about their profits and their geopolitical 
control. 

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`Heart of Darkness' -- A glimpse at colonialism in action
by Linda de Hoyos

       On Aug. 18, as the Rwandan Patriotic Front 
began its armed attacks on the camps of Rwandan refugees 
in Zaire, the London {Observer} published an op-ed by 
Norman Stone, which went straight to the heart of British 
policy for Africa. Citing the horrific strife in Rwanda 
and Burundi, Stone bluntly stated: ``For 
re-imperialization now begins to make sense again, and the 
Europeans would be in a good position to push through some 
sort of international mandate. This was what happened over 
a century ago, and you can argue that the problems of 
Africa were made infinitely worse than they needed to be 
because the process was brought prematurely to an end. The 
world today has a ghostly similarity to that of a century 
ago.'' 
        Many Africans who remember the pre-independence days 
would not agree with Stone's exultation of colonial rule. 
The reality of imperialism was not highly publicized, 
however; even as late as the 1960s, on the eve of 
independence for most countries, life expectancy in 
most African countries was generally under 30 years of age. One 
writer who had a first-hand view of colonialism and 
depicted it was the Polish-British writer Joseph Conrad. 
In 1889, Conrad traveled the Congo River as master of the 
ship {Otago.} In 1899, Conrad wrote about his journey 
through the Belgian Congo, in {Heart of Darkness.} Belgian 
colonial rule, which was run directly by and for the 
Belgian monarchy, was notoriously harsh. Conrad relates 
that the porters for a group of ``pilgrims'' were not given 
food each day, but handed a nine-inch piece of wire, which 
they were supposed to exchange for food with area 
Africans--a form of payment by which they starved. Under 
colonial rule, the Congo River Basin had been turned into 
no less than a giant concentration camp, in which people 
were worked to death, as Conrad described: 
 
                    - An `Inferno' - 

        ``A continuous noise of the rapids above hovered over 
this scene of inhabited devastation. A lot of people, 
mostly black and naked, moved about like ants.... They 
were building a railway.... 
        ``A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. 
Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the path. 
They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full 
of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with 
their footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, 
and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I 
could see every rib, the joints of their limbs were like 
knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and 
all were connected together with a chain whose bights 
swung between them rhythmically clinking.... All their 
meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated 
nostrils quivered, the eyes stared stonily uphill. They 
passed me within six inches, without a glance, with ... 
complete, deathlike indifference.... 
        ``At last I got under the trees. My purpose was to 
stroll into the shade for a moment; but no sooner within 
than it seemed to me I had stepped into the gloomy circle 
of some Inferno. The rapids were near, and an 
uninterrupted, uniform, rushing noise filled the mournful 
stillness of the grove, where not a breath stirred, not a 
leaf moved, with a mysterious sound--as though the tearing 
pace of the launched earth had suddenly become audible. 
        ``Black shapes crouched, lay, sat between the trees 
leaning against the trunks, clinging to the earth, half 
coming out, half effaced within the dim light, in all the 
attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair. Another mine 
on the cliff went off, followed by a slight shudder of the 
soil under my feet. The work was going on. The work! And 
this was the place where some of the helpers had withdrawn 
to die. 
        ``They were dying slowly--it was very clear. They were 
not enemies, they were not criminals, they were nothing 
earthly now--nothing but black shadows of disease and 
starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom. 
Brought from all the recesses of the coast in all the 
legality of time contracts, lost in uncongenial 
surroundings, fed on unfamiliar food, they sickened, 
became inefficient, and were then allowed to crawl away 
and rest. These moribund shapes were free as air--and 
nearly as thin. I began to distinguish the gleam of the 
eyes under the trees. Then, glancing down, I saw a face 
near my hand. The black bones reclined at full length with 
one shoulder against the tree, and slowly the eyelids rose 
and the sunken eyes looked up at me, enormous and vacant, 
a kind of blind, white flicker in the depths of the orbs, 
which died out slowly. The man seemed young--almost a 
boy--but you know with them it's hard to tell. I found 
nothing else to do but to offer him one of my good Swede's 
ships's biscuits I had in my pocket. The fingers closed 
slowly on it and held--there was no other movement and no 
other glance. 
        ``Near the same tree two more bundles of acute angles 
sat with their legs drawn up. One, with his chin propped 
on his knees, stared at nothing, in an intolerable and 
appalling manner: his brother phantom rested its forehead, 
as if overcome with a great weariness; and all about 
others were scattered in every pose of contorted collapse, 
as in some picture of a massacre or a pestilence. While I 
stood horror-struck, one of these creatures rose to his 
hands and knees, and went off on all-fours towards the 
river to drink. He lapped out of his hand, then sat up in 
the sunlight, crossing his shins in front of him, and 
after a time let his woolly head fall on his breastbone. 
        ``I didn't want any more loitering in the shade, and I 
made haste towards the station.'' 

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1.6 million dead: `Just a drop in the bucket'
by Linda de Hoyos

 
{EIR} estimates that since October 1990, when 
the Ugandan Army under the rubric of the ``Rwandan 
Patriotic Front'' first invaded Rwanda, at least 1.6 
million people have died in the wars that the British 
blueprint for East Africa has instigated. Another 2 
million people have been uprooted and displaced, although 
this is a very conservative figure. 
        This count is derived as follows: 

        1990 invasion of Rwanda by Uganda:
        150,000-200,000 killed; 
        One million displaced to the Nyacyonga refugee camp 
outside Kigali. There are reports of large-scale murders 
carried out in the north at that time. 

        1993 attempted coup against Burundi government of 
President Melchior Ndayaye:
        100,000 killed. 

        1993-96 continuing civil war in Burundi:
        150,000-200,000 killed. 

        1994 invasion of Rwanda by the Rwandan Patriotic 
Front: 
        1 million slaughtered in mass melee between Hutus and 
Tutsis; 
        2 million displaced and forced to flee the country; 
        200,000 refugees die of cholera and disease at 
refugee camps in Zaire in summer 1994. 

        1996 Ugandan-Rwandan-Burundi invasion of Zaire:
        Totals unknown, however: 

        -- 600,000 refugees remain unaccounted for inside 
Zaire. It is not known how many of these are now dead, but 
in early November, aid workers estimated that up to 10,000 
would die per day if they were left without assistance. 
Those remaining in the Zairean bush, have received very 
little, if any, assistance so far. 

        -- 1,000 refugees have been slaughtered in Burundi 
by the military, according to Amnesty International and 
the United Nations. This does not include those killed in 
fighting between the military and Forces for the Defense 
of Democracy. 

        -- There are continuing reports in the Western 
media, such as the Associated Press on Nov. 21 and the 
Belgian {De Standaard} on Nov. 25, that forces under the 
nominal command of Laurent Kabila and the Rwandan Armed 
Forces culled out men and boys from the refugees before 
their return to Rwanda, and also in Zairean cities and 
towns under their control. 
        In total, the imperial land grab of East Africa by 
George Bush's Barrick Gold et al., even excluding the 
invasion of Zaire, has cost the lives of 1.6 million 
Burundians and Rwandans, out of a total population for 
both countries of only 13 million. In per-capita terms, 
this would be the equivalent of a slaughter of 31 million 
Americans. 
 
             - The Malthusian cover story - 
        It has become a standard ruse among the practitioners 
of mass murder in Africa to justify their policies with 
the Malthusian myth that, since Africa has too many people 
anyway, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Africans 
are part of a necessary ``solution'' to the 
``overpopulation problem.'' Such claims were heard in July 
1994, for instance, by the British case officer for East 
Africa, Baroness Lynda Chalker, Minister of Overseas 
Development, the self-identified mentor of Ugandan 
President Yoweri Museveni. Speaking to the Royal Society 
of London on July 11, 1994, as Hutu refugees were dying of 
cholera in Goma at the rate of 20,000 a day, Chalker 
declared: ``The density of population in Rwanda is one 
reason why the scale of that tragedy is so enormous.'' 
        Similar sentiments are standardly voiced at the U.S. 
State Department. Dick Cornelius, of the State Department 
Office of Population, Refugees, and Migration, told a 
journalist in July 1994: 
        ``The people dying at the moment are not the main 
issue. I mean, 50,000 people dying of cholera is 
alarming--but on the grand scale of things, looking at the 
impact on population in Africa and the region, it's a drop 
in the bucket.'' 
        Then, on Dec. 17, 1996, U.S. Assistant Secretary of 
State for Global Affairs Timothy Wirth laid the blame for 
the war in East Africa on ``overpopulation.'' Speaking to a 
conference sponsored by the Center for National Policy 
Wirth declared: 
        ``Population pressure in Rwanda underlaid a great part 
of the problems that were faced in the conflict between 
the Tutsis and the Hutus, there were no places to let off 
steam--you know, you had eight and a half children per 
woman being born in a country that was the most 
cultivated, intensely cultivated--in all of Africa.'' 
        The agricultural cultivation of the country, it 
should be noted, isn't a problem for Rwandans, but it {is} 
a problem for the mining operations now seeking to control 
the entire Great Rift Valley. Wirth did not mention the 
name Barrick Gold, but he did indicate why ``population'' 
is a problem for Barrick Gold et al.: 
        ``If you ever flew over Rwanda, you see that every 
inch of land is cultivated. Burma and China pale in 
comparison to Rwanda; no matter what the political 
problems are, the fact is the population of Rwanda will 
double in 25 years, where are you going to put these 
people? How are you going to feed them? We can discuss the 
political problems all you want, but what do you do 
next?|... There are too many people competing for too few 
resources.'' 
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Inside story: the Bush gang and Barrick Gold Corporation
by Anton Chaitkin

       Barrick Gold, caught scrambling for loot amid the 
corpses in Zaire, is a corporate front for the George 
Bush-allied covert political apparatus. The Canada-based 
Barrick is Bush's only known current business enterprise. 
The company, which Bush now personally leads, was created 
by Bush's political partners--British elite narcotics 
financiers, and arms traffickers and money launderers. 
        Using the influence of this political faction, 
Barrick acquired important interests, first in the United 
States, then in Canada and South America. In South 
America, as Barrick boasts in its 1995 annual report, the 
company has an aggressive, long-term approach, with mines 
and projects established in strategic locations in 
Argentina, Chile, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. ``Almost 
two-thirds of the exploration and development drilling 
budget will be spent in South America, where the company 
has decided to focus its efforts,'' the annual report 
states. In addition, with its intended conquests in 
Indonesia and Africa, the firm now says it aims to move 
from third to first among the world's largest gold mining 
companies. 
        We present here the results of {EIR'}s investigation 
of the Bush company, centering on the following principal 
figures: 
        
George Herbert Walker Bush:
whose father was a 
partner in the powerful London-controlled private banking 
firm Brown Brothers Harriman. Relevant to the Barrick 
story, Bush was U.S. vice president and chief of covert 
operations in the Reagan-Bush (1981-89) administration, 
and U.S. President (1989-93). As a former President and 
power broker, Bush is Barrick Gold Corp.'s chief lobbyist, 
a stockholder in Barrick, and honorary senior adviser to 
Barrick's international advisory board. 
        
Adnan Khashoggi:
a Bush-allied Saudi billionaire 
and arms trafficker, founder of the Barrick Gold Corp.; 
famous for his illegal weapons sales to Iran. 
        
Peter Munk:
a business failure who became a 
protege of the British royal family, and Khashoggi's 
partner. Munk is chairman of Barrick Gold Corp. 
        
Brian Mulroney:
Canadian prime minister (1984-93) 
and George Bush's errand boy; Barrick Gold lobbyist and 
director, Bush's lieutenant on the Barrick international 
advisory board. 
        Barrick Gold was founded in Toronto, Canada, in 1983. 
The majority investment in the firm was held by Khashoggi 
and his arms-trafficking partners, who were just then 
gearing up the Iran-Israel-Nicaragua guns and cocaine 
tangle which would explode in 1986 as the ``Iran-Contra'' 
scandal. 
        The nominal chief of Barrick Gold was Peter Munk, a 
Hungarian Jewish immigrant who had repeatedly ``died'' as 
a businessman, only to be repeatedly revived by princes 
and principalities. This much of Munk's story is before 
the public in a biography that was written and published 
with Munk's support, entitled {Peter Munk: The Making of a 
Modern Tycoon,} by Donald Rumball (Toronto: Stoddart 
Publishing Co., 1996). It vaguely describes Munk's public 
disgrace, his self-exile in London, and his sudden rise to 
near-billionaire status, ending with Munk's invitation to 
George Bush became honorary senior adviser to the 
board, created in May 1995. 
 
                - The Clairtone heist - 
        Peter Munk first became notorious in Canada in the 
late 1960s, as the beneficiary in an insider trading 
scandal. Munk and a partner named David Gilmour owned an 
audio equipment manufacturing company that had been 
heavily subsidized by the province of Nova Scotia. Munk 
and Gilmour quietly dumped 29,000 shares of Clairtone 
stock in 1967, just before publication of the company's 
financial report tipped off other investors that the 
company was failing. After Munk sold at $9 per share, the 
stock plunged to $1. 
        Dr. Morton Shulman, a member of the legislative 
assembly of the province of Ontario, asked government 
representatives if Munk would escape with his money and no 
legal consequences (see Ontario Legislative Library record 
of Ontario provincial parliamentary debate on June 3, 
1969). 
        Ontario Minister of Financial and Commercial Affairs 
H.L. Rowntree responded that a court had been requested to 
order the Ontario Securities Commission ``to commence an 
action in connection with [Munk's] Clairtone Sound Company 
... for an action in the name of the company for the 
accounting of profits allegedly made by him by reason of 
the improper use of inside information.'' 
        But there was no government action, and Munk would 
indeed escape. A Clairtone stockholder named John 
Adams, who had lost about $5,500, had filed a legal action 
against Munk. Munk hired attorney Charles Dubin, whom 
Shulman described as ``a lawyer who acts for the 
Conservative Party whenever there is an embarrassment to 
be covered up.... He is amazingly good at covering up 
Conservative scandals.... And Charles Dubin ... knew 
exactly how to go about subverting the law in this case.'' 
        Shulman reported that Munk's attorney gave Adams 
$35,000 as a settlement, on Adams's agreement not to make 
the case public. Then, ``the lawyer for Adams and Charles 
Dubin went into the Judge's chambers ... [and] requested 
the judge to remove the papers from the registrar's office 
and keep them in his own private chambers, which the judge 
did.'' 
        Charles Dubin, Munk's inventive attorney, the fixer 
for Mulroney's Conservative Party, became Ontario's chief 
justice, and only recently retired. 
        The disappearance of legal papers in the Munk case 
discouraged other stockholders from going after Munk. But 
the resulting scandal made him a pariah in Canada, and 
Munk moved to London to start a new life. 
 
        - `Dope, Inc.' puts Munk back together - 
        The sister of Munk's partner, David Gilmour, had 
married one of the Vansittarts, a family high in the 
Anglo-Dutch aristocracy. Munk's approved biography reports 
that this Vansittart activated the formidable Sir Henry 
Keswick, who made arrangements to lift Munk into a new 
career. Keswick's family merchant banking firm, Jardine 
Matheson, had long been the British Empire's leading, 
out-in-the-open organizer of Asian illegal narcotics 
trafficking and drug-money-laundering. (Keswick, Jardine 
Matheson, and their cohorts are central figures in {EIR'}s 
book {Dope, Inc.} (Washington, D.C.: Executive 
Intelligence Review, third edition, 1992.) 
        Jardine Matheson made Munk the chief executive of a 
Bahamas-registered hotel corporation called Southern 
Pacific Properties (SPP), with Jardine money, and 
Jardine's chief executive, David Newbigging, as a 
director. Then, Jardine's historical dope partner, the 
Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P&O), 
joined the Munk enterprise; P&O's Lord Geddes himself 
joined Newbigging on the Munk-SPP board. In future years, 
as Munk rose to world prominence in the gold business, the 
Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp. and the Royal Bank of Canada, 
two ``Dope, Inc.'' financial agencies, would provide credit 
in the billions of dollars for Munk's expansion. 
        Munk-SPP became a giant hotel owner in Australia and 
the South Pacific islands, and seized control of the 
Travelodge chain. 
        Munk's rise in Australia was aided by his lifelong 
close association with fellow Hungarian emigre Sir 
Peter Abeles, Australia's transport mogul. Munk's 
stepfather had been secretary and assistant to Abeles's 
father in Vienna in the late 1940s. Abeles is reportedly 
known in Europe as ``the White Knight,'' in reference both 
to his British knighthood, and his reported large role in 
the cocaine trade. Jonathan Kwitney, in {The Crimes of 
Patriots} (New York: W.W. Norton, 1987), reports that, 
after Abeles encountered labor union problems in his 
American business, Abeles gave to gangster ``associates of 
... the most powerful Mafia leader in the United States 
... a 20% stake in his U.S. operations.'' His partners were 
indicted for hiding his payments, but Abeles refused to 
come to America to testify, and charges were dropped. 
 
       - Khashoggi, Barrick, and the ayatollahs - 
        In 1974, Munk signed an investment partnership 
agreement with arms-trafficking billionaire Adnan 
Khashoggi of Saudi Arabia. According to Munk's approved 
biography, the new alliance was cemented when Munk and 
Khashoggi were summoned to the London headquarters of 
Peninsular and Orient. P&O's hereditary boss was Lord 
Inchcape, whose predecessor in the 1920s (also Lord 
Inchcape) had directed Britain's India Commission to 
continue the Empire's opium production. 
        Munk later told his biographer that he was 
nervous--Khashoggi was late and perhaps ``the P&O directors 
wouldn't wait for us and it would seriously harm the 
relationship. It was already remarkable that they should 
have a Jew and an Arab together in their dining room.'' 
But, the mighty Lord Inchcape convinced Khashoggi to 
plunge in, and Khashoggi now provided most of the cash for 
the Munk enterprise. 
        Since this arrangement was sealed back in the 1970s, 
Munk has grown in favor as London's creature. He became a 
regular skiing partner of Prince Charles, who recently 
attended the opening of a Munk speculative real estate 
venture (a factory outlet mall) in Germany. Munk is a 
member of the elite ``1001 Club,'' co-founded by Prince 
Philip, a worldwide grouping of aristocrats, bankers, and 
speculators who support a radical anti-industrial, 
``pro-environmentalist'' looting strategy, and who provide a 
lion's share of the funding for Prince Philip's World 
Wildlife Fund. 
        The first Khashoggi-Munk-London venture was an 
attempt to build a 10,000-acre ``jet set'' resort complex 
immediately adjoining the Egyptian pyramids. As the scheme 
threatened to destroy the entire historical/archeological 
area, it evoked mass protests, and could not be forced 
through. Munk sued Egypt's government, and was eventually 
awarded $17 million by an international referee. 
        Khashoggi and his associates, backers of the British- 
and Bush-linked faction of the arms trade, created 
Barrick Petroleum Corp. in 1981, registered as a Delaware, 
U.S.A., corporation. Junior partner Munk, having returned 
from London, set up a parallel ``Barrick Resources'' in 
Canada. 
        But Munk's name was anathema to Canadian investors. 
So, Khashoggi was brought in to lend his prestige to Munk. 
Khashoggi made a televised publicity tour of the Toronto 
stock exchange, and announced that he had purchased 10,000 
(Canadian) Barrick shares. At that point, in fact, 
Khashoggi, his brother, and their international associates 
already controlled the company, partially through 
Khashoggi's Lichtenstein-U.S.A. conglomerate, ``Triad.'' 
        Munk was now launched as a corporate chairman in 
Canada. But this first Barrick, an oil development firm, 
went bust and lost all its money. 
        In 1983, the Khashoggi-led group formed the gold 
company whose name was soon changed to Barrick Gold Corp. 
Sheik Kamal Adham was reportedly one of the new company's 
founding co-owners. Adham, the chief of Saudi 
intelligence, had coordinated royalist guerrillas in 
Yemen, with British arms secretly provided through 
Khashoggi. 
        Beginning in 1985, Khashoggi borrowed $21 million, 
using his Barrick stock as collateral, for the covert 
transfer of arms to Iran for the Bush-North group, during 
an official U.S. arms embargo against the Khomeini regime. 
Khashoggi made Donald Fraser, the Toronto-based 
businessman who allegedly provided the loan from his 
Cayman Islands company, president of Khashoggi's Triad 
American holding company. 
        Khashoggi used the Monte Carlo office of the Bank of 
Credit and Commerce International to launder money for 
Iran arms sales. Barrick Gold Corp. co-founder Kamal Adham 
was later prosecuted for fraud in the BCCI case, and paid 
a $100 million fine. 
        Khashoggi's Saudi royal piggybanks also underwrote 
George Bush's Central American ``Contras'' adventures, 
making payments through the Swiss Bank Corp. and a Cayman 
Islands bank, totalling about $27 million. 
        When the Iran and Contra scandals blew up in 1986, 
U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese linked the two scandals 
in a Nov. 25 public revelation. The next day, Munk 
announced a shareholders' meeting to decide on an urgent 
restructuring plan. A new organization emerged, keeping 
the Khashoggi group in control, but easing Khashoggi out 
of the limelight and making Munk the sole public 
figurehead. Personnel were shifted into the Canada 
organization out of Khashoggi's Triad operations in Utah. 
Tariq Kadri, Khashoggi's longtime attorney, was made 
president of the Horsham holding company that was put over 
Barrick. 
        As the U.S. Congress took up the arms-for-drugs 
investigation and other trails leading to Vice President 
Bush, Khashoggi became too hot for the Canadian 
partnership, and the Khashoggi group's shares were 
officially sold off. Khashoggi was himself arrested in 
1989, in a fraud case involving the Philippines' Marcos 
regime. Taken from Switzerland and jailed in New York, 
Khashoggi was bailed out with a $4 million check from his 
partner, Peter Munk. 
 
             - Bush cashes his gold chips - 
        In 1986-87, at the height of the Iran-Contra 
controversy, the Barrick Gold Corp. acquired the 
Goldstrike property in Nevada for $63 million. The land, 
proving to hold $10 billion in gold, was the property of 
the U.S. government. Bush was elected President in 1988, 
and his administration put through a special 
dispensation--applied only to the Barrick Gold Corp.--to 
speed up the normal procedures for a mining company to 
take official title (``patent'') to the land. 
        With the Bush Goldstrike intervention, Barrick Gold 
shot up from insignificance, to world power status, and 
Bush himself climbed onboard. 
        President Bush's ambassador to Canada (1989-92), 
Edward N. Ney, had been for many years a Bush political 
operative and an international coordinator of Bush's 
``privatized'' intelligence activities. In 1992, Ney quit as 
ambassador and became a director of the Barrick Gold Corp. 
        The following year, Brian Mulroney resigned as 
Canadian prime minister. Mulroney was the most unpopular 
Canadian politician; but, in power, he had directly aided 
Barrick's international ventures, and had worked closely 
with Bush to force through free trade agreements. Munk 
immediately hired the former prime minister as a Barrick 
step-'n'-fetchit. The approved biography explains Munk's 
point of view: 
        ``Mulroney [was] the unhappy lightning rod for the 
angst of a whole nation, in office and out. Munk was well 
aware of these feelings toward his new recruit.... After 
nine years trotting around the world to meet world 
leaders, he had incomparable access to Presidents and 
prime ministers in all the key spots.... Mulroney arranged 
the necessary access to the key decision makers. Munk was 
starting to salivate at the prospect of an inside track 
into the huge Chinese territory.'' 
Mulroney has been paid over $300,000 per year by Barrick. 
        Barrick announced in May 1995, that a new 
international advisory board was being assembled, under 
the leadership of ``honorary senior adviser'' George Bush, 
the former U.S. President, who, like Mulroney, had 
recently lost his job at the hands of the voters. 
        On Nov. 27, 1996, the French newspaper {Le Monde} 
leaked the news that Barrick had been granted a concession 
to prospect for gold in Zaire--a lead which prompted the 
present {EIR} Barrick investigation. Canadian newspapers 
that same day reported that Barrick Gold had convinced the 
government of Indonesia to award to Barrick control over 
the world's largest gold find, and that {George Bush and 
Brian Mulroney had personally done the heavy lobbying} to 
accomplish this. 
        The Indonesia deal is indeed startling. The small 
Canadian mining company Bre-X Minerals Ltd. had intended 
to develop the Busang gold mine, on East Kalimantan. 
Suddenly, the government announced that it demanded that 
Barrick Gold Corp. be cut in to a 75% ownership stake in 
the mine, which is estimated to hold 57 million ounces of 
gold, with a current estimated value over $20 billion. 
        {EIR} contacted Placer Dome Inc., a rival company 
which has been bidding for the right to develop a share of 
the Busang mine. A Placer Dome spokesman would make no 
comment on Barrick Gold, saying only, of his own firm, ``We 
are a gold mining company, not a political organization.'' 
        The U.S. Republican Party, of course, has been 
attempting to use President Clinton's fund-raising 
relationship with Indonesian supporters as a scandal to 
break the President. Former President Bush, meanwhile, has 
been reportedly telling world leaders, privately, that the 
Clinton Presidency is destroyed; that his son, Texas Gov. 
George W. Bush, will be the next President, reviving the 
Bush dynasty; and that, therefore, leaders would be smart 
to work with him now. 
Return to Contents


Barrick's barracudas

       In announcing the creation of Barrick Gold Corp.'s 
international advisory board on May 3, 1995, Barrick 
Chairman Peter Munk said, ``They will be providing 
strategic advice on geopolitical issues affecting 
Barrick.'' In fact, they are components of the 
geopolitical dirty tricks apparatus centered around former 
President George Bush. The following is a brief profile of 
key members of Barrick's international advisory board and 
its board of directors: 
        
George Bush:
       serves as ``Honorary Senior Adviser.'' 
        
Brian Mulroney:
       prime minister of Canada from 
1984 to 1993. Mulroney became prime minister after 
backers of the Nicaraguan Contras helped knock out his 
competitor, Joe Clark. There were no serious 
investigations of the `Iran-Contra' Canadian connection. 
Mulroney sacrificed his political career by talking 
Canadians into accepting Bush's North American Free Trade 
Agreement (NAFTA). Though Canadian banks benefitted, 
350,000 industrial jobs were lost, and Mulroney became the 
most hated man in Canada. In the 1993 elections, Canadians 
voted out all but 2 of his party's 169 members of 
Parliament. 
        In 1994, Mulroney's phone calls to the Presidents of 
Chile and Argentina, and the prime minister of China, 
helped Barrick move into gold mines in those nations. His 
``advice'' was rewarded with $1.2 million in stock options 
and $300,000 in fees. Rev. Sun Myung Moon rewarded 
Mulroney and Bush for their vouching for him in 
Ibero-America in November 1996. Mulroney, a board member 
of Archer Daniels Midland, ran ADM's internal 
``investigation'' of its price-fixing scandal. 
        
Howard H. Baker, Jr.:
        (R-Tenn.) served in the U.S. 
Senate from 1967 to 1985, and was Reagan's chief of staff 
during 1987-88. He is on many corporate boards and runs a 
lobbying firm, which includes Barrick among its clients. 
        
Paul G. Desmarais, Sr.:
        is the richest man in 
Canada, and a member of Her Majesty's Council for Canada. 
He runs Power Corp. of Canada--which generates political 
power. He serves on many boards with Maurice Strong, a top 
operative of Prince Philip's World Wide Fund for Nature. 
For example, Desmarais and Strong are Honorary Director 
and Honorary Chairman, respectively, of the China-Canada 
Business Council. Desmarais used his contacts in China to 
win electricity-generating contracts for Power Corp., and 
to obtain gold concessions for Barrick. Desmarais is 
part-owner of Europe's largest private TV network, the 
banking Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, and Belgium's Petrofina 
oil giant. As a Commander of Belgium's L'Ordre de Leopold 
II, it seems natural for him to be involved with Barrick 
in recolonizing the former Belgian Congo. 
        
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr.:
       was president of the Urban 
League from 1971 to 1981, when former Democratic National 
Committee chairman Robert S. Strauss recruited him to 
become a senior partner in his law firm. Jordan is 
influential in the Democratic Party and in corporate 
America. 
        
Andro'nico Luksic:
        is a Chilean oligarch who was a 
big winner in Chile's Thatcherite sell-off of state 
assets. He is building a South America-wide banking empire 
as the local partner for Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the 
central bank of the opium trade, and for Spanish banking 
interests. They have snapped up banks in Chile, Argentina, 
and Peru--countries which Bush would like to integrate 
into a Western Hemisphere Free Trade Accord. In 1994, 
Barrick acquired 500 square miles of Chile's El Indio 
gold, silver, and copper district, containing 9.5 million 
ounces of gold. It also has mines in Peru, Argentina, 
Bolivia, and Venezuela. 
        
Peter Munk:
       a member of the 1001 Club (see article, p.|19. 
        
Karl Otto Pohl
       was president of the Bundesbank, Germany's central 
bank, from 1980 to 1991; he was a top official of the International 
Monetary Fund and Bank for International Settlements, and is a 
member of Germany's Social Democratic Party. 
        
Jose E. Rohm:
       manager of Argentina's private 
Banco Central de Negocios, is an expert in turning the 
privatization of state assets to personal advantage. 
        
Robert M. Smith:
       the only real gold miner in the 
bunch; chief operating officer of Barrick Gold. 
 
               - The board of directors - 
        
Edward N. Ney:
Bush's appointee as ambassador to 
Canada (1989-92), is a Barrick director. Ney became CEO of 
Young and Rubicam in 1970, where he fired one-third of the 
staff, and built it into the world's biggest ad and public 
relations agency. He supervised George Bush's 1988 ad 
campaign, including the infamous racist ``Willie Horton'' 
ad. As ambassador, he helped jump-start the NAFTA 
initiative of Bush and Mulroney, with propaganda 
saturation from Y&R's Burson-Marsteller division, which he 
now controls. Burson-Marsteller is a veritable private 
diplomatic service, with agencies in 34 countries. 
        
J. Trevor Eyton:
known as ``Canada's most powerful businessman,'' brokers 
the incestuous relations among the Club of the Isles' families 
which are based in Canada. Eyton started his career in 
British intelligence's Argus-Hollinger nexus, next to media 
magnate Conrad Black. Since 1979, he has managed Brascan and 
other entities for the Bronfman family. He was appointed a 
Canadian senator as a reward for channelling the Bronfmans' 
money into buying the 1984 election for Mulroney's party, and 
to help get the Bush- and Mulroney-backed NAFTA three-way accord 
with the United States and Mexico through the Canadian 
Parliament. When the Bronfmans fused with Barrick, Eyton 
joined its board. 
 

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Anglo American Corp. set to grab Brazil's CVRD?

 
       Engineers, geologists, and other officials who 
work at Brazil's strategic mining and industrial 
corporation Companhia Vale do Rio Doce (CVRD), 
suspect that the South African firm Anglo American 
Corp. may have been already secretly selected as 
CVRD's buyer. The state-owned CVRD, located in the 
mineral-rich Amazon region, is scheduled for 
privatization early in 1997. When President Fernando 
Henrique Cardoso traveled to South Africa in late 
November, he was accompanied by CVRD President 
Francisco Schettino, and together they met in 
Johannesburg, South Africa, with top executives of the 
Oppenheimers' Anglo American. 
        Brazilian nationalists perceive the CVRD 
privatization as a giveaway of a national treasure to 
foreign usurers, whose only goal is to loot the 
country's mineral wealth, and strip Brazil of its 
sovereignty. Opponents of the privatization have denounced 
the fact that government officials have leaked strategic 
secrets to bidders regarding CVRD's operations. {O Globo} 
journalist Marcio Moreira Alves warned on Nov. 28 that 
control of CVRD would give Anglo American Corp. ``an immense 
competitive advantage, besides opening to it the iron 
mining market, where it is the only large mining 
company not present [in Brazil].... The activities of 
Anglo American in Brazil ... represent barely 1.7% of 
its business, but multiplying that could provide it an 
escape route, in case of any accident along the way in 
the country [South Africa] where it is 
headquartered.'' 
        Anglo American has an ugly history in Brazil. On 
Dec. 4, {Monitor Mercantil} documented that Anglo 
American closed down three mines and fired 3,000 of 
5,000 miners employed at its mine in Cuiaba, in Matto 
Grosso state. Those workers not fired were paid a 
pitiful average of 350 reals (about $340) a month. 
Even worse was the situation at another Anglo American 
mine in neighboring Nova Lima, in Minas Gerais: 
alarming unemployment, stagnation of the local 
economy, high accident rates, and 4,500 miners 
afflicted with work-related diseases. Because of the 
high death rate among miners, {Monitor} reported, the 
city of Raposos, right next to Nova Lima, has the 
highest percentage of widows in all Brazil. ``Is this 
the `inevitable' modernization which Fernando Henrique 
Cardoso preaches for the country?'' the daily 
asked.--{Cynthia Rush}


Bush consorts with Moonies,criminals in Ibero-America


       Sir George Bush's five-nation tour of 
Ibero-America on Nov. 20-25, 1996, was an organizing 
offensive with an ``I'm in charge here'' message. In 
every speech, not only did he demand implementation of 
a Western Hemisphere Free Trade Accord (WHFTA), which 
he had set into motion as President, but he also made 
clear that his dynasty--his sons--were the important 
politicians of the future with whom people will have 
to deal. William Clinton is just an unfortunate 
interruption in the Bush drive for a ``new world 
order,'' he implied. Bush hasn't hidden the fact that 
he's raising large amounts of money to buy the 
Presidency in the year 2000, for his son George W. 
Bush, now governor of Texas. 
        The man who financed Bush's power-play in 
Ibero-America is the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, head of the 
Unification Church, with documented ties to gun- and 
drug-trafficking, money-laundering, and other 
nefarious activities. Thus, it is no surprise that 
Bush used his Ibero-American jaunt to champion the 
British colonial doctrine of free trade, and 
to attack, as he did in Peru, the Clinton 
administration's anti-drug policy. 
        Everywhere he went, Bush tried to promote his 
image as a still-powerful former President and 
policymaker. But he didn't have an easy time of it, 
not least because of his ties to the filthy Moon 
empire, but also because he is under investigation back 
home for his role in directing the crack-cocaine flow 
into the United States in the 1980s to fund the 
Contras' war in Nicaragua. In every country, he was 
greeted by advertisements and press articles 
denouncing him and Moon for their crimes. Some of the 
coverage was taken straight from {EIR}. In Peru, Bush 
became so unhinged by this publicity, that he had 
Peruvian police arrest three organizers of the 
Ibero-American Solidarity Movement (MSIA) who used 
{EIR} materials to leaflet against his presence. 
        His trip to Peru was arranged by Interbank, whose 
managing director, Ismael Benavides, led the campaign 
against a new banking law. Interbank is partly owned 
by Nicholas Brady, Bush's former treasury secretary 
and good friend who accompanied him in Lima. The 
proposed new bank-regulation law includes provisions 
against drug-money-laundering, for which the Clinton 
administration has been organizing in discussions with 
the Peruvian and other Ibero-American governments. 
During his 30-hour visit to Lima, Bush promoted 
Interbank, leading Peru's {Si} magazine to remark on 
Nov. 26 that Bush's trip was the banks' ``last card'' 
against the banking law. 
        Bush was received by the Presidents of Venezuela, 
Brazil, and Peru during his tour, and he was even 
housed at the Presidential residence in Buenos Aires 
at the invitation of Argentine President Carlos Menem. 
He also made a point of meeting with Venezuela's 
former President and convicted felon, Carlos Andreas 
Perez, a criminal who shares Bush's policy outlook 
of smashing the nation-state. Perez's ties to the 
Cali drug cartel have been documented by {EIR}. 
Whenever possible, Bush also praised former Mexican 
President and now-fugitive Carlos Salinas de Gortari, 
for helping him to consolidate the North American Free 
Trade Agreement (NAFTA). 
        The crowning point of the tour, and the one which 
gained the most notoriety, was the ceremony for the 
founding of Reverend Moon's new newspaper, {Tiempos 
del Mundo}, in Buenos Aires. As the featured speaker 
at the event, Bush received a 6-figure fee. Publicity 
surrounding the event was so hot, however, that 
President Menem did not appear. His advisers 
recommended that he not be seen in public with Moon. 
And no wonder. Moon told the diners: ``When you were 
kids, did you ever taste the cooties from your nose? 
Were they sweet or sour? Why didn't you feel they were 
dirty? Because that's a part of your body. The Rev. 
Moon has discovered something that no one else had 
thought about,'' said Moon. ``When you defecate, do 
you use a mask? This is no laughing matter, this is 
serious,'' said the Korean would-be Messiah, for whom 
``the dividing line between heaven and hell is located 
... in the sexual organ. I want you all to center on 
the unique sexual organ, the unchangable sexual organ, 
and that you use it as the foundation to search for 
God.'' Bush accompanied Moon to Montevideo, Urugay, 
were the Korean cult leader led an ``evangelization 
seminar'' for 4,200 Japanese maidens, who are being 
sent to spread Moon's gospel throughout Ibero-America. 
        Also speaking at ``The Americas in the 21st 
Century'' seminar in Buenos Aires were two other 
prominent Bushmen: Bush's partner in Barrick Gold, 
former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, and the 
point man for Bush's Contra operation at the State 
Department in the 1980s, former Assistant Secretary 
Elliott Abrams. 
        Mulroney predicted that ``One day NAFTA will 
integrate all the nations of America,'' but only if 
the United States leads the effort. ``The tendency 
which accuses the U.S. is dangerous,'' he said, adding 
that the 1994 Summit of the Americas in Miami began to 
turn that around. Abrams, once known as ``Mr. 
Narc-Contra,'' called for a war to defeat those who 
oppose NAFTA: The United States ``now must understand 
how much its future depends on Latin America, and has 
to open up.... We have to stop the United States from 
retreating. There is always someone who loses, and 
those who lose, fight; they must be defeated so that 
free trade can advance.''--{Cynthia Rush}
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Bush's letter abets Barrick's golddigging
by Gail G. Billington

 
       On Nov. 26, 1996, the small Canadian mining 
company Bre-X Minerals released a ``guidance'' from the 
government of Indonesia, which requested that Bre-X sell 
the majority of its 80% holding in what {Maclean's} 
magazine called the ``mine of the century,'' the Busang 
goldmine in East Kalimantan state, to Barrick Gold. By 
Dec. 17, Umar Said, secretary general of Indonesia's 
Ministry of Mines and Energy, reported that Bre-X and 
Barrick had reached an agreement, whereby Barrick would 
take 67.5% to Bre-X's 20.25% share in Busang, and 
Indonesia would retain a 10% stake. Overnight, Barrick had 
outmaneuvered several other contenders, such as Placer 
Dome, to emerge as perhaps the world's premier 
golddiggers. Busang is currently valued at $21 billion, 
with estimated gold deposits of 57 million ounces, but 
which could end up nearer to 100 million ounces. 
        According to a Houston-based spokesman for Barrick's 
``honorary senior adviser,'' former President George Bush, a 
Sept. 19, 1996 personal letter from Bush to Indonesian President 
Suharto clinched Barrick's advantage on the Busang mine 
deal. Bush's personal intervention was first revealed in 
the Dec. 21-23 {Financial Post,} a Toronto-based paper 
controlled by Bush's media ally Conrad Black, who, in the 
same issue, declared Barrick CEO Peter Munk ``newsmaker of 
the year.'' 
        Bush spokesman Jim McGrath confirmed the {Financial 
Post} story, describing Bush's Sept. 19 letter as ``a 
private letter between friends,'' which mentioned Bush's 
high regard for Barrick. ``He wrote one letter ... and 
that's it,'' McGrath told a journalist. ``There were no 
phone calls [to Suharto].'' 
        By early November, Barrick CEO Munk landed in Jakarta 
to handle negotiations. The Nov. 29 Toronto {Globe and 
Mail} suggested that Munk may have been seconded by 
Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien, who spent 
several hours with Suharto in bilateral talks following 
the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Manila, 
less than 48 hours before Indonesia's guidance was made 
public. An industry source told the Dec. 2 {Northern 
Miner} that there is no question that Munk interfered in 
Bre-X's Indonesian operations, ``and, in doing so, has 
placed a gun at Bre-X's head ... because Munk ... wants 
this thing so bad he can taste it.'' 
        No one is saying how much Barrick will pay Bre-X for 
its stake in Busang, although Barrick is expected to foot 
the $1.3-1.5 billion cost of constructing the mine. But 
Busang has already started earning money for Barrick, 
thanks to stock-market speculation in Barrick's favor, and 
to Bre-X's detriment. 
        Several outstanding issues remain to be clarified, 
including appeasing Bre-X's stockholders and sorting out 
multiple claims to the three Busang fields by Bre-X's 
Indonesian partners. The Dec. 21-23 {Financial Post} 
reported that Bush also sent a letter to Bre-X's 
stockholders, assuring them that Barrick would give them a 
fair deal. However, one group of shareholders has retained 
the services of law firms Lang Michener in Vancouver, and 
Baker and Botts in Houston, the latter the family firm of 
Bush's secretary of state, James Baker III. 
        Industry sources say the Barrick/Bre-X split only 
covers the two richest fields, Busang II and III. Bre-X 
has a work contract and a local partner for Busang I, 
which is estimated to contain only about 2.6 million 
ounces of gold. The local partner, PT Askatindo Karya 
Mineral, will get a 2.25% share as a result of the 
Barrick/Bre-X split, but Jean Anes, of the Indonesian 
Consulate in Toronto, told the Dec. 23 {Northern Miner} 
that Bre-X ``still has to give 10% to their local partner,'' 
presumably to cover Askatindo's 10% claim to Busang II and 
III. A fourth party, businessman Jusuf Merukh, has a 10% 
undisputed claim to Busang I, and a 40% claim to the two 
richer sectors, and has threatened to sue. 
        Barrick has made out like bandits on Busang, while 
Bre-X has been bullied by the ``big boys.'' Indonesia's 
headaches over Busang will continue, in part because 
resentment of Barrick's high-society, knuckle-dragger 
profile is likely to fuel a nasty press campaign in which 
Bush would be more than happy to see Indonesia played as 
the scapegoat for damages to Bre-X et al. 
        The irony is that it is Bush-linked press in the 
United States, such as Bush's favorite Moonie paper, the 
{Washington Times,} and the {Wall Street Journal,} which 
have carried the most visceral attacks on Indonesia in 
their coverage of the ``Riadygate'' connection to the 
Democratic National Committee's fundraising, and gave the 
most fawning praise of the Nobel Peace Prize award to East 
Timor terrorist spokesman Jose Ramos-Horta in October, 
1996. 
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George Bush's $10 billion giveaway to Barrick Gold
by Mark Sonnenblick

     In 1985-86, Barrick Gold Corp. paid two other 
mining companies $63 million for a small working Nevada 
mine, called Goldstrike. Within a few years, it was found 
to contain 24.6 million ounces of gold, worth about $10 
billion. Goldstrike was on federal property. Under 
existing legislation, designed in 1872 to populate and 
bring development to the West, miners could operate on 
federal land for free, once they had filed a claim. They could 
obtain full legal title to the land at $5 an acre, upon 
completion of a long and expensive process called 
``patenting.'' 
        In 1992, however, pressure was building for a new 
mining law to require that those given federal properties 
pay a royalty, a certain percentage of what they mine each 
year. As expected, when the Clinton administration took 
office in 1993, it sought a 12.5% royalty. At that rate, 
the 25 major mine claims then in the process of being 
privatized, would eventually yield an estimated $10.75 
billion to the U.S. Treasury. 
        Mining companies caused a major jam-up at the Bureau 
of Land Management, as they rushed to obtain patents 
before Congress applied royalties. By 1992, the long 
waiting line at the BLM Nevada office made it doubtful 
that many mines would get over the critical hurdle in the 
patent process in time. It would normally take several 
years for a mine of Goldstrike's size and complexity to 
complete the process, a BLM source commented, and the 
average during the previous four-year period was 10.3 months. 
But, Barrick made it in only 4.8 months. 
        Barrick filed its applications for 1,144 acres of 
land in March and April 1992. That summer, a pilot 
program for ``expedited processing'' of Nevada patents was 
instituted by BLM chief Delos Cy Jamison, a Republican who 
had been appointed to that post by President George Bush 
in 1989. Jamison concocted this speed-up procedure with 
the BLM Nevada state director, without informing his own 
staff. ``Bells went off in my head when I heard about it,'' 
a former BLM staffer told {EIR.} 
        Philip M. Hocker, president of the Mineral Policy 
Center, an environmentalist outfit, testified to a 
Congressional subcommittee on March 11, 1993: ``Under a new 
and unpublicized `pilot project,' the BLM allowed Barrick 
to hire outside mineral examiners to perform the 
evaluation of `discovery' on Barrick's mining claims. The 
specialists who determined whether these claims should be 
patented for $5 per acre received payment for their work 
directly from the company which wanted a `yes' answer. 
This is a flagrant conflict of interest, which BLM is not 
only allowing, but encouraging. Barrick is the only 
company to complete this process so far.'' 
        Only Barrick got expedited treatment. Its patenting 
was rushed through in record speed; the BLM district 
manager approved the report of the outside consultant 
hired by Barrick the day after it was filed, in February 
1993. Other companies remained stuck in the BLM backlog. 
 
          - `The gold heist of the century' - 
        As soon as he took office, Interior Secretary Bruce 
Babbitt called the Barrick deal ``the gold heist 
of the century.'' He swore he would make sure the taxpayers 
received something for federal gold. He slapped a de facto 
moratorium on new patents, by abolishing the expedited 
process and requiring that he personally approve each 
patent. 
        Babbitt's office held up Barrick's patent, on the 
dubious grounds that its pumping would harm an endangered 
species. In August 1993, Barrick sued in U.S. District 
Court in Nevada. The verdict in favor of Barrick came 
through in March 1994. Babbitt immediately granted the 
patent, made a big show of indignation, and abandoned all 
pretense of ending mining giveaways. 
        The approved biography of Peter Munk explains a bit 
of what happened: ``For much of 1993, [Munk] spent a lot of 
time in the District of Columbia ... lobbying. At that 
stage Brian Mulroney, Canada's former prime minister, had 
just joined the Barrick board and he immediately went down 
to Washington to establish contact with key senators, 
using his close relationship with George Bush to good 
advantage.'' 
        Once Barrick had clear title to Goldstrike, Barrick 
lobbyists worked with Hocker and other environmentalists 
for ``reform'' legislation that would impose royalties on 
companies which had not cleared the patent hurdle (on 
Sept. 29, 1994, royalty legislation was killed in a 
House-Senate conference). And, with unrestricted property 
rights over the $10 billion Goldstrike, Barrick Gold had 
the collateral for the explosive worldwide expansion it 
suddenly began, months after the patent was 
granted. 

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Profile: Laurent Kabila: A mercenary for free marketeers
by Linda de Hoyos

       It came as no surprise for Zaireans when Laurent 
Kabila, head of the ``Alliance of Democratic Forces for 
Liberation'' in Zaire, held a press conference to vow his 
commitment to ``reform the Zairean government and to 
install a free-market economy.'' 
        Kabila also announced that his forces would not seize 
any mineral concessions held in Zaire by foreign 
companies. To the contrary, Kabila's adviser Jean Kabongo 
told the press Dec. 5, ``Those companies will be able to 
operate as normal. Just as long as they pay their taxes to 
us, the taxation will not affect their operations. We do 
not want them to leave, we need them to operate the 
mines.'' Kabongo said that the Alliance is also eager to 
open up more diamond mines to foreign interests. ``In 
Kasai, more diamonds must be mined, the country's mineral 
wealth exploited. We are going to try and throw the area 
open to government-sponsored mining licenses in Kasai in 
areas that have not yet been explored.'' 
        These pronouncements have confirmed the view of many 
Zaireans that Kabila is no more than a mercenary for 
foreign mining interests in eastern Zaire, specifically 
for interests such as Barrick Gold, Anglo American, and 
Societe Generale of Belgium. 
        Although Kabila for years dubbed himself a Marxist, 
he has taken the ``Damascus Road'' to embrace the ``magic of 
the marketplace,'' in the same fashion as his longtime 
associate, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. As Kabila's 
spokesman in Belgium, Gaetan Kakudji, explained to a 
reporter for {La Libre Belgique} on Nov. 5, ``Our Marxism 
dates back to the Cold War: You had to adopt a political 
color according to whichever bloc was helping you.... The 
[Berlin] Wall has fallen. The important thing is to 
rebuild the economy. Our social project is based on a 
market economy.'' 
        Kakudji's admission that ``political color'' is 
secondary to whoever is ``helping you,'' is the key to 
Kabila's long-standing career as a mercenary. Born in 
Manono in North Shaba province in Zaire, Kabila first went 
into action as a mercenary for the renegade Independent 
State of Katanga, established on July 11, 1960, by Moise 
Tshombe, on behalf of Belgian mining interests. The chief 
instigator of the Katanga uprising was the Union 
Miniere du Haut Katanga, which was then the world's 
third largest producer of copper, and the world's chief 
producer of cobalt. Belgian profits from Union Miniere 
were in excess of 3.5 billion Belgian francs in 1959. 
Belgium was naturally anxious that this profit not revert 
to any independent Congo government. The export duties 
paid to the Congolese government in 1959 by the Belgian 
company constituted 50% of the government's revenue. Once 
the Independent State of Katanga was established, this 
money went to Tshombe, to pay his mercenary forces, which 
included Kabila. 
        Later, Kabila fought the Zairean central government 
in the Mulele uprising in eastern Zaire in the 1960s, 
alongside fellow gun-for-hire Che Gueverra. As the 
province most rich in mineral wealth in Zaire, Shaba 
province has long been a target for secession. Kabila has 
participated in each bid--first in 1960-61; then in ``Shaba 
I'' and ``Shaba II,'' in 1977 and 1978, respectively, when 
mercenaries attacked Shaba from Angola; and again in the 
mid-1980s. Between times, Kabila also worked as a 
mercenary in Angola. Among his mercenary bosses has been 
the famous Belgian mercenary Bob Denard. 
 
               - Nyerere `Kindergartner' - 
        However, the reason that Kabila has been tapped again 
for this latest venture is because of his strong ties to 
the British Commonwealth countries in Africa, say 
well-informed Zairean sources. Kabila is a member of the 
``Nyerere Kindergarten,'' having received his political 
training in Tanzania under the tutelage of former 
Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, along with Ugandan 
President Museveni and John Garang, head of the marauding 
Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA). Even today, 
Kabila is known to travel on a Tanzanian passport. 
        Kabila spent years of exile in Rwanda, Zambia, and 
Tanzania. After Museveni came to power in Uganda in 
1986--with the help of Nyerere--Kabila was a frequent 
visitor to Kampala. 
        Sometimes the mercenary business is slow. According 
to various sources, during the 1970s and 1980s, Kabila 
would organize some ``help'' for himself from Moscow, by 
staging fake uprisings and mercenary operations in 
outposts in Uganda, photographing the staged incidents and 
placing the photos in his own ragtag newspaper for 
publicity. 
        Now, Kabila has been picked up as the ``commander'' for 
the invasion of Zaire by forces from Rwanda and Uganda. To 
the extent his forces have anything to do with Zaire, they 
are composed of Banyamulenge, who are Tutsis from Rwanda who have 
lived in Zaire, and {who returned to Rwanda} in 1994, to 
join the Rwandan Patriotic Front takeover of the country 
from Uganda. According to even British sources, Kabila's 
troops speak Kinyarwanda (the language of Rwanda), or 
English with Ugandan or Rwandan accents. Military 
discipline is supposedly modeled on that of Paul Kagame's 
Rwandan Patriotic Army. As the {Washington Post} noted on 
Nov. 2, Kagame admitted that some of his soldiers had 
joined the ``rebel'' troops in Zaire. In short, Kabila is 
the ``Zairean'' face for the Rwandan-Ugandan force that 
invaded Zaire in mid-October. 

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British revive old blueprint for Africa
by Linda de Hoyos

     ``This time, let Zaire fall apart,'' was the 
headline under which Conor Cruise O'Brien, a United 
Nations envoy to Zaire in the early 1960s, wrote a 
commentary on Zaire appearing in the Nov. 19 {Times} of 
London, the semi-official mouthpiece for the British 
Foreign Office. Applauding the ``Tutsi rebel rout'' of 
Rwandan Hutu refugees, O'Brien says that the issue now is 
what will happen to the ``huge state of Zaire.'' ``Zaire's 
condition now,'' he says, ``appears to be terminal, and 
international efforts to preserve its integrity will only 
increase the agonies of its peoples. It should be allowed 
to assume such shapes as the energies and aspirations of 
its various peoples may eventually assign to it. The 
energies of international diplomacy should be confined to 
holding the ring, and discouraging the 
internationalization of the tremendous internal 
conflict.'' 
        As O'Brien is well aware, he is speaking way after 
the fact. The division of Zaire has been long-standing 
policy, and the conflict has already been 
internationalized by virtue of the fact that Zaire was 
invaded in mid-October 1996 by a military force combined 
of Ugandan, Rwandan, and Burundian troops, with the 
backing, through Uganda, of British intelligence. 
        O'Brien's demand for ``letting Zaire go'' has 
accordingly been stated in more honest terms by the Tutsi 
Rwandan Patriotic Front, now ruling in Kigali, Rwanda. 
Rwandan Foreign Minister Anastase Gasana and Defense 
Minister Paul Kagame have called for a ``Berlin II'' to 
re-divide the territories of Africa, in imitation of the 
1885 Berlin Conference of the colonial powers to divide 
the known African lands. The Rwandese have declared openly 
that the Tutsi ``Banyamulenge'' of eastern Zaire are welcome 
to return to Rwanda, but ``they should bring their land 
with them.'' Although Rwandan Foreign Minister Gasana says 
that a Berlin II should show ``respect for the current 
borders of all states,'' he equivocates, stating that the 
major purpose of such a conference must be to ``examine the 
consequences of Berlin I on the cultural, social, and 
economic fronts, and so forth, to prevent there being 
stateless people at our borders, but it is not a matter of 
calling the borders into question.'' 
 
                - Museveni is our man - 
        But schemes for redividing the region were put forth 
far earlier by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, and is 
the motivation for the Ugandan Army invasion of 
Rwanda in 1990, and again in 1994. Among eastern Africans, it is 
understood that Museveni wants to carve out a ``Hima 
empire'' from southern Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and 
eastern Zaire. This might appear as a pipe dream, but it 
appears to coincide with foreign interests--notably 
British. British Minister of Overseas Development Lynda 
Chalker has advertised her own close relationship to 
Museveni, underscored by frequent visits to Uganda. The 
idea of Museveni's regional hegemony has also found favor 
in the State Department. A former ambassador of one of the 
Great Lakes countries recalls how he was called into the 
State Department East Africa desk in 1994--right before 
the April 6 downing of the plane carrying Rwandan 
President Juvenal Habyrimana--and asked who he thought the 
political leader of the region should be. His first 
answer, Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, was rejected. 
His second answer, Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, was 
also incorrect--suggesting to him by process of 
elimination that the State Department was promoting 
Museveni as their man. 
        The geopolitical idea is similar to the actual line 
of functioning of the erstwhile UN multilateral military 
force, that was supposed to deliver aid to the ``routed'' 
refugees of eastern Zaire in November and December. The 
peacekeeping force was not to go through Kinshasa or 
Zaire--despite the fact that there are 600,000 refugees 
still remaining in central, not eastern, Zaire--but 
through Entebbe, Uganda, and Kigali, Rwanda. The 
Anglo-American mining interests now scrambling for the 
gold and extraordinary mineral wealth of eastern Zaire, 
want to direct their operations through the same route. 
The reason is the looters' paradise Museveni has turned 
Uganda into--endless tax holidays and full repatriation of 
profits of fully owned foreign ventures. 
        As O'Brien is fully aware, the British have long had 
their eye on eastern Zaire. In his own account, {To 
Katanga and Back--A UN Case History,} written in 1962, 
O'Brien, who was in the Irish foreign service and was a 
special UN envoy to the Congo, relates that the British 
firmly backed the cause of the secession of Katanga. 
O'Brien reports a newspaper account at the time: 
``President Tshombe [of Katanga] received the British 
Consul ... who came to convey the sympathy of their 
government to the Katangese cause.'' At that time, London 
wanted to seize control of Shaba province's mineral wealth 
through Rhodesia. Although Leopold II of Belgium had taken 
sovereignty over Shaba at Berlin I, the Belgians had not 
occupied it. Britain's roving imperialist Cecil Rhodes was 
on his way to establish dominion over the territory, when 
the Belgians woke up. A deal was struck whereby British 
capital would get a slice of the profit from Shaba's 
exploitation. But even as late as 1961, there was renewed 
talk of attaching ``Katanga'' to Rhodesia. 
        With Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, out of the picture, 
British intelligence, for whom O'Brien speaks, is honing 
in on the region once again. This time through Museveni's 
Uganda, the country where life expectancy for Africans has 
fallen the fastest in the last decade, but where profits 
for British financial interests have risen the fastest. 


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