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Eritrean Run

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Squeezing the nearest hand-hold, my right knuckles turned red from friction with the passenger door while my left hand clung to the handle of a 10-gallon water jug secured behind my bench. Our driver and translator, Kelata Abraham, honked each time he approached a blind mountain curve. This road of dirt and loose rocks was cut into the largely treeless highlands of central Eritrea, once a part of Ethiopia on the African Home. We were in a 6-cylinder, 4-door Toyota Land Cruiser equipped with a reserve diesel tank whose gauge was conveniently roof-mounted alongside an altimeter. Its needle read 2,200 meters (7,200 ft). Outside my window was a shoulderless drop-off whose end I couldn’t see.

We were on a day trip just outside the Eritrean capital of Asmara, before setting out on our main journey — a 200-mile run, first through the highlands and then down into its desert plains all the way to Eritrea’s western border with Sudan. As freelance journalists, our goal was to find and interview Sudanese guerrillas who had just opened up a new front there against Sudan’s regime.

The product of an Islamic revolution, it is backed now by both Iran and Iraq. En shala, Arabic for God willing, we’d return safely.

My partner, Dan Connel, even with his grizzled moustache and thinning hair, looks and acts much younger than his 52 years. He has been covering wars here for the BBC, The Washington Post and others since 1976. Lengthy time away from home, however, led to family tensions including the painful estrangement of his youngest daughter. But before we left Asmara, Dan received a letter addressed “Dear Daddy,” in which his daughter wrote that she just had a baby girl. “Now I’ve got them both to celebrate,” he gushed, showing faint spider webs around hazel eyes.

Our first stop was an old plantation decorated with rows of violet bougainvilleas, a flowering tree whose limbs grow like vines. Today, they ring farms and vineyards throughout Eritrea — a legacy of the Italians who colonized it back in 1889. Later the Italians tried to expand south into neighboring Ethiopia. Sipping tea under an old log-and-bougainvillea canopy, I contemplated my own maternal roots and link to this region. My great-grandfather, Theodore Mussano, had served here as a non-commissioned officer in the Italian army. He was one of the few Italians to survive the 1896 Battle of Adua, a decisive campaign which checked Italy’s reach on the African Horn until the time of Mussolini.

Next we visited Zagher, a village where Dan is nothing short of a walking legend. Some of his old friends invited us into their home, shooing away two donkeys from the sitting logs on the dirt floor. We were treated to bitter home-brewed beer and a spread of shuro, a chickpea sauce spiced with fiery berbere, served communally over injerra, a flat, sponge-like bread, which is this area’s staple. Respecting decorum, we ate with our right hands, as the left is reserved for a less sanitary chore.

Eritrea, which only became an independent nation in 1993, is itself a mélange of the region’s cultures. The Tigrinya people and language dominate, although Arabic, especially in the lowlands near Sudan, is also widely spoken. Spiritually, the population is about equally divided between Eastern Orthodox Christians and Sunni Muslims. There is also a small minority who, like Kelata, are Catholic, converted first by Spanish Jesuits and later the Italians. These differences came clear during our journey. Seeing our white faces, children in the highlands repeatedly yelled “Italiani” to get our attention, while in the lowlands they playfully shouted “Khawagia”, the local Arabic word for white people.

A flat tire in Asmara delayed our departure for Sudan. But the Kumho 16-inch, all-terrain steel-belted radials still had almost an inch of tread. Kelata checked their air pressure, and made sure the diesel tanks were topped off. Our rented 1994 Land Cruiser had an appropriate Sandstone finish embellished with red sport stripes. Despite 53,657 kilometers, its ignition timing and compression sounded perfect. So did its cassette deck. Kelata brought Tigrinya ballads as well as some hybrids of traditional melodies with rock.

Security was a concern. In addition to the civil war in Sudan, Eritrea was fighting its own guerrillas, a small but very dangerous group known as Islamic Jihad or Islamic Holy War. But so far it had been limited to isolated acts of terrorism and assassinations, and, even among Muslims, seems to have little support. One reason is that Eritreans, Muslims and Christians alike just finished waging a 30-year war for independence against Ethiopia, leaving Eritreans everywhere with an uncanny sense of national pride. Take Asmara. It is both the cleanest and safest capital I’ve visited on five continents. Nonetheless, Islamic Jihad was still active in the lowlands, suspected of planting large land mines on rural roads, which had killed dozens of people.

While the road out of Asmara was paved, there was little if any shoulder, even as we climbed to 2,800 meters (9,240 ft). When there was a guardrail, it was only a series of white cement squares, each just a few feet high, and spaced out with almost a car length between them. Adding to the challenge, oncoming vehicles, especially large Fiat trucks, tended to hug the middle of the road, while mountain goats herded by mongrel dogs and Tigrinya shepherds often appeared as well without warning.

The terrain looked dusty and dry, even though it was the end of the highland’s rainy season. Topsoil here had little to cling to with most of the trees either cut down for firewood or otherwise destroyed during the war. Reminding us of it, about every hour we passed the rusted carcass of a tank. The more mangled ones had clearly been blown apart by large mines, while others looked like they had simply broken down and been abandoned by their Ethiopian drivers. Models included Soviet T-54s, and M-48s designed by Chrysler.

Each superpower had backed Ethiopia at different times against the Eritrean guerrillas, as what was an intense struggle between local forces was only part of a larger contest for them. The United States armed Ethiopia until 1977, when its new government turned east toward the Soviet Union. Regardless, the Eritrean guerrillas fought each foreign-backed regime with equal vigor.

Meanwhile, neighboring Somalia, which had been a Soviet ally, flipped in the opposite direction. At the same time, Sudan stayed in the American camp — until 1989 when its Islamic revolutionaries seized power.

Blacktop soon changed to dirt and rocks. Softer coil springs made this ’94 Land Cruiser a serious improvement over the durable, but spine-jolting ’70s and ’80s models that I had endured covering wars in Central America. Though the Land Cruiser’s oversized radiator can make it hard to get the heater fired up in winter, here — where temperatures can climb as high as 115 degrees Fahrenheit — our temperature gauge stayed well below the medium mark.

Descending to 800 meters (2,640 ft), we began to pass mountains of meteor-size boulders cracked from once-solid rock by the sun. Yet, Dan remarked that he had never seen the surrounding plains look so green. Abundant rainfall had made the brush and even some grass flush with color, while acacia trees, whose limbs branch out in a natural canopy, were also blooming. Dan had been here back in late 1984, when Ethiopia, then including Eritrea, suffered the worst famine in memory.

We stopped for the night in Keren, a small city settled between two jagged rows of mountains that open up into the desert. Kelata took us to see a giant baobab tree where, 141 years ago, Italian Franciscans had made a shrine. During World War II, according to legend, Italian soldiers who were under attack from British planes took refuge inside the tree and Survived. But many on both sides of this battle did not. Near the shrine today is a cemetery for British soldiers still maintained by the United Kingdom. Back in 1935, Mussolini reversed the defeat at Adua to finally annex Ethiopia along with Eritrea, with Italian forces staying in both until being driven out by the British in 1941. (The winning allies later made Ethiopia and Eritrea one state). According to the British Cemetery book, “the most bloody and decisive battle, took place here at Keren.”

The graves were adorned with freshly planted flowers, with a caretaker just finishing for the day. I gravitated to one, that of Captain H.S. Frost of the Cheshire Regiment, who, at 27, died on the battle’s last day. His headstone read: “Greater Love Hath No Man Than This. That a Man Lay Down His Life for Friends.” I wondered if this was an embellishment granted gratuitously to fallen officers. But only a few men, officers and enlisted men alike, had any such inscription. Next to Frost were I. Ulrich and S. Wajnsztejn, “pioneers” in the same unit. Engraved into each of their headstones was a Star of David.

More heat followed the dawn. Most of the riverbeds were dry, as they only have water during and right after a rain. But in a few places their banks were overgrown with tall palm trees, a green oasis in a dusty sea. We still had to stop often for passing herds of goats as well as sheep, and several times for camel trains loaded with firewood and led by bearded men wearing thin, white cotton jebel alias, one-piece mountain covers.

Islamic Jihad was still on our minds. The previous night we ran into an Eritrean doctor who is an old friend of Dan’s. He told us about two recently captured Jihad fighters. One he described as a young, impressionable lad who left his pastoral life here to move to Sudan’s urban capital of Khartoum where he was introduced to revolutionary Islamic ideas. But since his father had supported the Eritrean struggle, Eritrean officials saw him as a good kid under bad influence, and eventually let him go. The other one, however, admitted to being with jihad for six years. “He had a knife and a gun,” said the doctor, who had removed a bullet from his chest before turning him over to authorities from Asmara. “He told me that he shot Christians, but that he only used his knife to cut the throats of Muslims who failed to support their Holy War.”

The next morning for breakfast we had an egg, bean and onion dish, served with injerra and shai, Arabic for tea, with lots of sugar. On the way out of town, a young woman asked us for a ride. Selam, as I’ll call her, wore plastic gold shoes and a red-flowered dress with long sleeves, along with a green-print scarf covering her hair. She is an elementary school teacher. After she climbed in, one of her pupils, a beaming girl, ran up to hand us a clear plastic bottle of mineral water. Selam, who speaks Arabic as well as English, thanked her in Tigrinya. Shy at first, Selam displayed a delightful sense of humor. She told me that she had relatives living in Sudan. But mostly we played games with language and guffawed together when a redheaded bird perched on the back of a grazing goat.

Later we approached a deep riverbed, where a crowd of people and vehicles had gathered. Selam, to avoid giving the wrong impression, re-arranged her scarf to also cover the sides of her face and neck. It had rained heavily several days before, with the flood washing out the packed dirt, which had made a passageway through this depression. (Its bridge had been knocked out long ago.) A group of men pushed first a truck and then a bus through successfully. Once the way was clear, the Land Cruiser’s 4-wheel drive low range easily conquered this slippery challenge.

We dropped Selam off in Tessenei, the last town before Sudan, and then went on to find our Sudanese guerrilla contacts. Later, they took us to see a group of about 25 fighters dug in behind the rocks of a ridge just over the border. Armed with Kalashnikov rifles and larger machine guns, they peered out over the open plain at a Sudanese Army outpost. Two weeks before, these same fighters had ambushed a group of Sudanese militia riding in a Toyota Land Cruiser, destroying it and killing seven. Now the guerrillas handed me binoculars to see another Toyota Land Cruiser, a white 4-door with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted in back, raising a train of dust as it raced for the safety of the outpost.

Back in Tessenei, we met with Eritrean Army officers. They told us about two anti-vehicular land mines that had recently been uncovered on rural roads — planted, they said, by Islamic Jihad. Driving off to inspect one we got a flat. After changing it, we went back to town to get it fixed. An Eritrean Army colonel joined us in the cab before we left again — only to get another flat. This time we just changed it and kept going. Then at about 45 mph we hit a football-size rock, blowing a third tire. Without an extra spare to go on, the colonel flagged down a 6-wheel Russian military truck, while Kelata stayed behind with the Land Cruiser.

The colonel took us to see one of the mines with both its pressure plate and detonator safely removed. A new one made of plastic, it had markings in French, German and Italian. While waiting for Kelata to fetch us, an 18 year-old Eritrean Army soldier, Aden, prepared a batch of spoon-standing coffee. Following tradition, she first crushed the grounds, and then boiled water over charcoal fire, before brewing the grounds several times in a smaller silver pot filtered with horse hairs to serve the three progressively less potent rounds. Later Aden showed us her less traditional side, brandishing her Kalashnikov rifle.

We left a day later after lunch — soon to be overcome by a group of Eritrean Army soldiers in, of course, a Toyota Land Cruiser. They had just discovered a land mine a few miles back on the very same road that we were traveling. We went back to inspect and photograph it. Except for the lot number, it was identical to the other mine. Although the soldiers had already disarmed it, they feared lifting the charge itself for fear that it might also be booby-trapped.

Like the villagers who pass by every few hours in crowded buses, we were lucky. The only reason that nobody hit this mine is that it must have been planted over a week ago, before the last strong rain. The shifting mud and sand had changed the course of the road, with vehicles passing now only about 100 ft away. Fortunately one of the laborers sent to repair it saw part of the mine’s pressure plate sticking out of the dirt.

In single file we walked back to our Land Cruiser, and drove on. I prayed, to no particular deity, that we wouldn’t find any more mines. Humdillylah, Thanks Be to God, we didn’t.

The Changing Face of Power in Africa

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With Laurent Kabila’s successful overthrow of Zairean President Mobutu Sese Seko, American policy makers need to conduct a long-overdue reappraisal of the contours of African politics. Rather than unfolding as an isolated insurgency, Kabila’s rise to power signals the latest in a series of victories for a new breed of African leaders. While their political futures remain uncertain, they still constitute a distinctive, and important, political bloc.

Most of the continent’s old, post-colonial leaders were despots. Typically they, like Mobutu, had served as national army officers, went on to lead post-independence coups and consolidated their power with military force and internal political repression. The new ones like Kabila led insurgencies that defeated these despots and their armies in battle. Other guerrilla commanders include Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda’s Paul Kagame in Central Africa, as well as Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi and Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki on the African Horn. Uganda’s Museveni came to power in 1986. The rest did so only after the Cold War.

This recent vintage of these leaders means, among other things, that they are relatively free of the Cold War’s obsolete ideological baggage. While Kabila and company were all once influenced by Marxism, none espouses the Marxist faith anymore. Instead they have shed their ideology for pragmatism, with Eritrea’s Afwerki, for example, stating that corruption — rather than capitalism or colonialism — is the greatest threat to development. The new generation of African leaders has been looking for new development strategies that combine state-led economic growth with free-market reforms.

At the same time, none of these new soldier-statesmen could be easily called democratic: Each runs a de facto one-party state.

The Clinton administration, which has so far leaned little on these soldier-statesmen, now says that it will encourage the Congo’s Kabila to share power and ultimately hold elections. But all these other new leaders have yet to open their societies fully, making it unlikely that Kabila, whose own forces have already committed horrendous crimes, will be the first to open his.

This confusion is symptomatic of a wider policy drift in the Clinton administration. Clinton and his advisers have yet to develop an effective policy for Africa. As a point of departure, they should recognize that these new soldier-statesmen have begun to form a new, independent bloc.

It is a bloc, first of all, midwifed by a vigorous nationalism. Both Eritrea’s and Ethiopia’s guerrillas fought first against Haile Selassie, backed by the United States, and later against Mengistu Haile-Mariam, backed by the Soviet Union. Similarly, Rwanda’s long-time dictator, Juvenel Habyarimana, was backed by France until the end, just as Zaire’s Mobutu had been.

During the Cold War, Mobutu was backed by both France and the United States, in particular the CIA. Now the political landscape is different. Russia abandoned Africa after the Cold War, while Kabila and others have been pushing France out. At the same time, the U.S. presence on the continent has grown.

Most of Africa now seeks closer ties with the United States. But these new soldier-statesmen are not the type to come forward with their palms extended. This year Eritrea suspended the operations of all non-governmental organizations, fearing both that foreign funding to human rights groups, for example, might spur too much independence within civil society, and that it would lead to a welfare-like dependency among its people.

Rwanda has even more cause to distrust the international community. The reasons, not surprisingly, lurk in the country’s recent history, which is intimately linked with the fall of Mobutu’s Zaire. In fact, Kabila was just an old guerrilla-leader-turned-mineral-thug until Rwanda’s 1994 genocide. In addition to flagging the decline of France, it continues to help change the region. It is against this background that Rwanda lent the most important foreign troops, foreign advisers and other resources to Kabila’s campaign.

Rwanda is a central player in the new politics of nationalist independence. And to address Rwanda’s stature effectively, policy makers must squarely acknowledge that all their previous responses to Rwanda’s bloody internal strife have not only failed, but worsened it. Before the genocide against Rwanda’s Tutsis (and moderate Hutus) began in 1994, France armed and trained the Hutu government led by President Juvenel Habyarimana, despite its then-escalating massacres against Tutsis. The United States and other outside powers merely watched. The French, meanwhile, created a safe haven not for Tutsi survivors but for Hutu refugees, including the Hutu militias — known as Interahamwe — which led the attacks.

After the attacks ended, the United Nations stepped in, providing aid to these Hutu refugees now in camps across Rwanda’s border in eastern Zaire. It continued to do so over the next two years, even though UN officials were well aware that many of these camps were controlled by the Interahamwe. The Hutu militias used the camps as sanctuaries from which to launch new raids back into Rwanda. Both sides were guilty of abuses, and hundreds more people were killed.

By late 1996 it became clear to many observers that the Interahamwe’s ongoing presence in the refugee camps had to be stopped. But while the United Nations agreed to send a peacekeeping force to eastern Zaire, it did not have the mandate to pursue and arrest the Interahamwe.

Enter Laurent Kabila. Last November as this UN force was preparing to deploy, Rwanda and Kabila decided to deal with them on their own. Kabila’s guerrillas defeated both Zairean army troops in eastern Zaire and put the Interahamwe on the run in just a few weeks. Then Kabila’s forces, feeding off of 32 years of popular discontent with Mobutu’s despotic rule, spread into Zaire, finally taking the country last week after a surprisingly short, seven-month campaign.

Kabila’s success in Zaire reminds us of another important trait that Africa’s new soldier-statesmen share in common: They all lead military forces that are, by any standard, highly competent and well trained. Nonetheless, after winning battles, Kabila’s troops systematically hunted down and killed unarmed Rwandan Hutus suspected of association with the Interahamwe, as well as Zaireans suspected of being ex-government soldiers.

This doesn’t bode well for the Congo’s future, and whether Kabila will become just another despot remains to be seen. He is the least impressive of all these new soldier-statesmen. Though he fought Mobutu on and off for more than 30 years, Kabila is better known for being a strongman among his country’s lucrative diamond and gold trades in Eastern Zaire. Kabila has limited experience and education; Africa’s other new soldier-statesmen are better prepared to lead their nations.

Politically, however, all these countries face an uphill task, and the always troubled question of ethnic conflict looms as one of the greatest potential sources of instability. Take the Congo, Kabila himself is a member of the Luba ethnic group, while most of his troops are Tutsi. Both are a minority, among the country’s more than 200 ethnic groups. Much the same pattern holds for the minority leaders of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Tigrean-led regime of Ethiopia. (Eritrea, whose Tigrean leader, Afwerki, governs a Tigrean majority, is the only exception.) Though other individuals from other ethnic groups hold even top formal posts in all their governments, these new soldier-statesmen have yet to develop any real plans to provide for the peaceful transfer of power — a key feature of any fledgling democracy. Nevertheless they all represent regimes that are far more responsive, accountable and egalitarian than any of the respective despots they’ve overthrown.

If American policy makers want to see democracy take root in Africa, they will take advantage of the new opportunities that statesmen like Kabila offer them. Freed of the worst ideological and human-rights excesses of their predecessors, the new breed of African soldier-statesmen could harbinge a new continental order that is more open to the benefits of market economies and civil society. Yet to nudge this new bloc of African regimes toward egalitarian rule, the United States needs to understand that they are a bloc in the first place.

La Mano Blanca en Colombia

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La CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) ha respaldado por mucho tiempo a sus aliados anticomunistas quienes, durante su relación con la CIA o después, han traficado drogas. Esto no es sorprendente. Desde los primeros años ’60, los manuales militares estadounidenses sugirieron que los agentes de la inteligencia se aliaran con “contrabandistas” y con “operadores del mercado negro” para derrotar a los insurgentes comunistas, como reportó Michael McClintock en su libro “Los instrumentos de la formación del Estado” (Instruments of Statecraft). La CIA hizo precisamente eso, por ejemplo en el Sudeste de Asia.

Después, durante la misma década, la CIA se alió con los Hmong en Laos, entre otros, quienes según el historiador Alfred W. McCoy, traficaban con opio.Note1 Otro ejemplo es Afganistán donde, en los años ochenta, la CIA apoyó a los Mujahedeen en su lucha contra la Unión Soviética. Durante los años noventa, según Tim Weiner (The New York Times), los mismos Mujahedeen llegan a controlar hasta la tercera parte del opio (materia prima de la heroína) que llega a los Estado Unidos.

En nuestros días, el ejemplo de Colombia es aún más claro. Además de sufrir tasas desenfrenadas de criminalidad común, Colombia es un país lisiado por dos campañas de órden político en marcha; una es la guerra que, desde hace tres décadas, enfrenta a los militares colombianos (respaldados por la CIA) y sus aliados paramilitares, contra los grupos guerrilleros de la izquierda, anteriormente primero pro-Moscú y luego pro-Habana. La otra campaña es la guerra contra las drogas, con un campo de batalla mucho menos claro. Todos estos grupos tienen elementos involucrados en el narcotráfico colombiano que cubre aproximadamente el 80 por ciento de la producción mundial de cocaína, la materia prima del crack.

La CIA no es la excepción en Colombia. Desde 1995, un equipo de élite antinarcóticos, dirigido -en actitud progresista- por una mujer y conformado mayormente por tecnócratas jóvenes y competentes, tuvo una participación decisiva en la captura de los siete capos del Cártel de Cali. Pero en 1991 hubo un otro equipo de la CIA que jugó un papel diferente. Más interesados en apoyar a la guerra sucia contra la insurrección que a los esfuerzos antidrogas, éste equipo ayudó a forjar y financiar una alianza secreta anticomunista de los militares colombianos y grupos paramilitares ilegales, muchos de los cuales hoy en día trafican drogas.

¿Por qué fue secreta esta alianza? Dos años antes, en 1989, luego de que una investigación del gobierno colombiano descubrió que el Cártel de Medellín (encabezado por Pablo Escobar) se había apoderado de estos mismos grupos paramilitares, Colombia los había prohibido. En aquel tiempo, Escobar y sus socios estaban resistiendo ferozmente la presión de los EE.UU. para la aprobación en Colombia de leyes de extradición que permitieran su procesamiento en los EE.UU. por cargos de narcotráfico. Así, Escobar y sus socios empezaron a controlar a los grupos paramilitares más fuertes de Colombia, para utilizarlos en una lucha terrorista contra el Estado. Estos paramilitares, con sede en el Valle de Magdalena Medio, fueron los responsables de una ola de crímenes violentos, incluyendo la destrucción por bomba del vuelo HK-180 de la aerolínea Avianca en 1989, que causó la muerte de 111 personas. Investigadores concluyeron que la bomba fue detonada por un altímetro y que los autores del atentado fueron capacitados por merce

narios israelitas, británicos y otros, encabezados por un teniente coronel de la reserva del ejército israelita, Yair Klein. Los militares colombianos habían ayudado a proteger los entrenamientosNote2 y Escobar cancelaba los honorarios de los mercenarios.

La CIA ignoró estos hechos cuando, dos años más tarde, decidió renovar en secreto la alianza entre los militares colombianos y los grupos paramilitares. Los grupos insurgentes de la izquierda permanecían relativamente fuertes, a pesar de que había finalizado la Guerra Fría y la ayuda económica del bloque de Europa Oriental. Muchos sindicatos, grupos de estudiantes, campesinos y otros, les proveían con apoyo político y hasta logístico. Los agentes de la CIA sabían que los paramilitares -civiles generalmente comandados por oficiales retirados de las Fuerzas Armadas- podían ofrecer a los militares colombianos pretextos plausibles para negar su participación en asesinatos de izquierdistas sospechosos y en otros crímenes de esa índole. En palabras de Javier Giraldo, sacerdote jesuita y fundador de la Comisión Intercongregacional por la Justicia y la Paz en Colombia: “Una enorme red de civiles armados empezó a reemplazar, por los menos en parte, a soldados y policías quienes podían ser fácilmente identificados. Est

os grupos irregulares empezaron a emplear métodos cuidadosamente diseñados para mantener en secreto sus actividades y generar confusión.” Pero ni la CIA ni ninguna otra agencia estadounidense admitió que seguía apoyando a la campaña contra-insurgente en Colombia.

En cambio, los oficiales estadounidenses afirman que, desde 1989, todo el apoyo de su país a Colombia ha sido planificado en función de la guerra a las drogas. “Hubo un debate muy grande (sobre la mejor distribución del) dinero para las operaciones anti-narcóticos en Colombia”, afirmó el coronel (retirado) de Ejército estadounidense, James S. Roach (hijo), en ese entonces el agregado militar de más alto rango y enlace de la DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) en Bogotá; “EE.UU. estaba buscando una manera de ayudar, pero si no estás dispuesto a combatir con tropas propias, hay que buscar una salida”.

Así hicieron. Primero, un equipo interagencial (que incluyó a representantes del Grupo de Asesores Militares de la Embajada de los Estados Unidos en Bogotá; del Comando Sur en Panamá; de la DIA en Washington; y de la CIA en Langley, estado de Virginia), formuló recomendaciones para hacer una reestructuración general de las redes colombianas de inteligencia militar. Después, la CIA financió independientemente la incorporación de fuerzas paramilitares a esas redes. No le importó a la CIA que estas fuerzas paramilitares en ese momento fueran ilegales en Colombia; ni tampoco le importó que fueran explícitamente prohibidas, debido a la creciente influencia de Pablo Escobar y su Cártel de Medellín en la dirección de estos grupos.

Además del tráfico de drogas, los nefastos paramilitares colombianos han sido implicados en muchos abusos de los derechos humanos. Este hecho llevó a que, entre otros, el Departamento de Defensa norteamericano recomendara que las Fuerzas Armadas colombianas no los incorporaran en sus nuevas redes de inteligencia. “La intención fue no ser relacionados con los paramilitares”, dijo el coronel Roach, quién mantuvo contactos frecuentes con agentes de la CIA en Bogotá, quienes, según él, tenían otra estrategia. “La CIA organizó las redes clandestinas por su cuenta; tenía bastante dinero, fue más o menos como si llegara Papá Noel”. Mark Mansfield, portavoz de la CIA, se negó a brindar cualquier comentario al respecto.

Noticias de estas redes clandestinas de inteligencia salieron por primera vez a luz pública a través de Human Rights Watch, cuando ésta organización privada publicó, en noviembre de 1996, documentos de las FF.AA. (estadounidenses y colombianas), así como testimonios orales, que demuestran que ambos, el Departamento de Defensa (EE.UU.) y la CIA, persuadieron a Colombia para reorganizar por completo su sistema de inteligencia militar. En mayo de 1991, Colombia conformó 41 nuevas redes de inteligencia en todo el país; según la orden colombiana que las estableció: “con base en las recomendaciones de la comisión de asesores militares de los EE.UU.”. Más tarde, cuatro ex-integrantes colombianos de una red en el Valle de Magdalena Medio, declararon que la red tenía incorporados a grupos paramilitares ilegales, pagados tanto por el acopio de información de inteligencia como por el asesinato de personas sospechosos de ser izquierdistas.

Aunque oficiales estadounidenses sostienen que apoyan la reestructuración del sistema de inteligencia como parte de los esfuerzos antidrogas, la mencionada orden colombiana instruye a las nuevas redes a luchar solamente contra “la subversión armada” o la guerrilla izquierdista. De hecho, la mayoría de la guerrilla izquierdista colombiana -especialmente las FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias Colombianas)- está también involucrada con el narcotráfico. Sin embargo, un reciente estudio interagencial, encomendado por Myles Frechette, embajador de los EE.UU. en Bogotá, concluye que el papel de las guerrillas en el narcotráfico se limita principalmente a la protección de plantaciones de materia prima, y en menor grado, a las operaciones de procesamiento de droga. En cambio, de acuerdo a las autoridades de orden colombianas así como de inteligencia estadounidenses, los paramilitares derechistas (en alianza con los militares) protegen mayormente los laboratorios de droga y las rutas internas de transporte. Es más,

según un informe de las fuerzas de orden colombianas, el narcotráfico ha vuelto a ser el “eje central” de financiamiento de los paramilitares.

Asimismo, un informe de 1995 sobre el Valle de Magdalena y preparado por investigadores de la Policía Judicial colombiana, sostiene que los militares y paramilitares en esta zona permanecen aliados: “no exclusivamente para la lucha anti-subversiva, sino también para beneficiarse económicamente y abrir el paso a los narcotraficantes”. El informe nombra como paramilitar sospechoso a “el conocido narcotraficante Víctor Carranza”. Carranza, contemporáneo de Pablo Escobar, en un principio cobró fama al alcanzar la cumbre del rentable negocio de esmeraldas en las montañas de Boyaca, eliminando a la vez al númeroso frente guerrillero de esa región. Poco después, Carranza también llegó a ser un terrateniente de importancia, comprando enormes terrenos en los llanos orientales de Meta, una provincia plagada de cultivos para la droga así como de laboratorios para su procesamiento. Hoy en día, la policía colombiana identifica a Carranza como traficante de múltiples toneladas de droga, y como uno de los líderes principale

s de los abundantes grupos paramilitares colombianos, como por ejemplo, en Meta, el infame Serpiente Negra. Organizaciones de derechos humanos han acusado a Carranza de ser el autor intelectual de tanto asesinatos como masacres.

No existen evidencias de que Carranza haya sido, en algún momento, un informante o colaborador de la CIA pero tiene credenciales anticomunistas impecables y mantiene contactos frecuentes con los militares. Testigos militares han dado cuenta de una reunión con oficiales en su hotel “Los Llanos” en Villavicencio (Meta). También los oficiales estadounidenses saben mucho de él: “Carranza aparece a menudo en los informes de inteligencia”, según un experto. Don Víctor, como lo conocen sus hombres, es un líder chapado a la antigua. Continúa frecuentando sus minas de esmeraldas para disfrutar la primacia en la selección de las piedras más grandes y de las mejores vetas descubiertas.

Carranza es un hombre intocable. En 1995, uno de sus supuestos lugartenientes, Arnulfo (Rasguño) Castillo Agudelo, fue detenido, a consecuencia de la exhumación (en 1989) de aproximadamente cuarenta cadáveres en una de las haciendas de Carranza en Meta. Rasguño se negó a ser entrevistado en la prisión Modelo de Bogotá. Tampoco Carranza, quien normalmente evita la publicidad, quiso dar comentarios.

En años recientes, Carranza ha ampliado sus operaciones en Colombia central a través del Valle de Magdalena. El mencionado informe policial señala que: “Carranza está planeando adquirir Hacienda Bella Cruz (allá) para usarla como una base para sus actividades, (y) traer a 200 soldados paramilitares de Meta”. Testigos sostienen que ahora el lugar está sumamente concurrido por hombres armados, quienes han desterrado a centenares de campesinos del lugar. Según Jamie Prieto Amaya, obispo católico de la región, Carranza y otros sospechosos de narcotráfico han comprado cerca de 45.000 acres (18 mil hectáreas) de terreno a través del Valle de Magdalena.Note3

Otro personaje paramilitar sospechoso es Henry Loaiza (El Alacrán), detenido en 1995 con ayuda de la CIA bajo sospecho de ser uno de los siete capos del Cártel de Cali. Como Carranza, el Alacrán se encuentra implicado en varias masacres de civiles y supuestos izquierdistas, llevadas a cabo conjuntamente por fuerzas militares y paramilitares. Entre ellas está la masacre de Trujillo cerca de la ciudad de Cali, que se caracterizó por el uso de motosierras.

La policía colombiana identificó a otros (ex-)oficiales militares como sospechosos de narcotráfico, como es el caso del Mayor Jorge Alberto Lázaro, acusado de ordenar a los paramilitares en el Valle de Magdalena en la ejecución de masacres. Hoy día este valle, que se extiende por una distancia de 400 millas hacia los puertos caribeños en el norte, es uno de los corredores principales para el tráfico de drogas procesadas y de precursores químicos.

Más de un año después de la caída del muro de Berlín, La CIA ayudó a posibilitar una colaboración oscura entre los militares y los paramilitares colombianos. De este modo, la CIA ha facilitado crímenes, en el ámbito de los derechos humanos y del narcotráfico. Si ésta clase de comportamiento fue reprensible durante la Guerra Fría, ahora es completamente indefendible.

(Texto original en inglés, traducción: Kathy Ledebur.)

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Notas

Note1 MCCOY, Alfred W. “The Politics of Heroin: The CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade”, Laurence Hill Books, Chicago, Illinois, 1991.

Note2 Se estableció que los militares colombianos habían mantenido contacto por radio con la base de entrenamiento de los paramilitares.

Note3 Prieto Amaya fue citado en la revista Cambio-16 de Bogotá.

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Frank Smyth: Periodista independiente de nacionalidad estadounidense. Ha publicado sobre narcotráfico y políticas antidrogas en ‘The Village Voice’, ‘The Washington Post’, ‘The Wall Street Journal’ (Estados Unidos) y otros.

Rwanda’s Butchers: the Interahamwe and Former Rwandan Army

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Special Report No 13

Military history will record the Interahamwe and allied Rwandan soldiers uniquely. Back in April 1994, they achieved a dramatic tactical success, while failing entirely in their strategic vision. When faced with having to share power both with a Tutsi guerrilla movement (RPF) and with moderate Hutu politicians, their leaders decided that if they could just eliminate both elements they could stay in power. Over the ensuing weeks, they and their followers successfully managed to kill about 800,000 people, including nearly all of Rwanda’s moderate Hutu political activists and at least half of the country’s then-resident Tutsi population. Yet, they still lost the war.

Today, the propensity of the surviving Interahamwe and former Rwandan Army elements to carry out seemingly irrational acts of terrorism should not be underestimated. Even before they embarked on genocide, these same forces were responsible for a wave of bombings of civilian markets as well as landmines left on rural roads. These killed mostly their own fellow Hutus in the cynical hope that Hutu survivors would blame these attacks on Tutsis.

Isolated now in the jungles of central Zaire, the Interahamwe and former Rwandan forces have nowhere to go. Collective starvation, like death from disease, is a palpable scenario. These forces are unlikely to allow any of the civilians still travelling with them to leave. And they still may have access to funds from radical supporters in the diaspora, and could use them to buy arms either through or from the Zairian Army. And unlike the latter, the Interahamwe and former Rwandan combatants now have nothing to lose by fighting.

The Interahamwe and their allies are well-supplied with small arms, including Kalashnikov, R-4 and Belgian FN assault rifles, FN MAG Belgian machine guns, RPG-7 grenade launchers, hand grenades, and mortars. These forces have also used landmines and South African No 2 mines modeled upon the US Claymore.

Rwanda’s Intervention in Zaire?

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Special Report No 13

The ADFL and the RPA share a community of interest as well as experience. Both represent Tutsi minorities who have suffered under majority rule in their respective countries. Each of their leaders has also long been involved in a guerrilla struggle.

Laurent Kabila, the self-declared ADFL leader, is a former Marxist who briefly joined forces with Che Guevara in the 1960s during his short-lived stint in Zaire. Although Kabila has fought the government of Mobutu for over 30 years, he has also long been a strongman in Zaire’s lucrative ivory, diamond, and gold trades. In the late 1980s, he frequently visited Uganda after Yoweri Musoveni and his guerrillas took power. One of Musoveni’s officers was Paul Kagame; he was later Musoveni’s intelligence chief and helped to secretly organize a Tutsi guerrilla force, the RPF, which invaded Rwanda in 1990. Today, Kagame is Rwanda’s defense minister and head of the RPA.

The ADFL’s recent surprise offensive in eastern Zaire bears an uncanny resemblance to the RPF invasion of Rwanda in 1990. Rebel forces in both cases managed to train, arm and infiltrate fighters almost without detection. Each demonstrated impressive tactical prowess, with operations executed by well-disciplined and highly motivated combatants. Although each force is responsible for specific cases of abuse against unarmed civilians, each made a significant effort to minimize civilian casualties. The question now is: “What are their respective objectives?” They share the goal of destroying the former Rwandan Army and Interahamwe. However, Kabila claims that his primary goal is to overthrow Mobutu and seize power in Zaire.

The ADFL was established on 18 October 1996 as a coalition of four opposition political parties: the Popular Revolutionary Party, led by Kabila; the National Council of Resistance for Democracy, led by Andre Kissasse-Ngandu; the Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Zaire, led by Mosasa Minitaga; and the People’s Democratic Alliance, led by Robert Bugera. None is well known. The ADFL also purports to include various Zairian ethnic groups besides the Banyamulenge, including the Kasai and Babembe ethnic groups, and to represent a number of geographic regions besides North and South Kivu, including Kasai Province. Still, the ADFL is far from marching on Kinshasa.

The most important elements of the ADFL remain the Banyamulenge, its crucial base of support remains the RPA. The RPA has little to gain by promoting a rebel takeover of all of Zaire, but it remains unclear to what extent Rwanda will support the ADFL as it tries to consolidate its hold on eastern Zaire. As long as the Interahamwe and the former Rwandan troops remain active, the ADFL affords Rwanda a useful buffer against Hutu rebel incursions. Such incursions, leaving behind murdered witnesses of the genocide, have escalated dramatically over the past year. Rwanda has responded by killing Hutu civilians whom they suspect of supporting them, as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has documented.

The ADFL’s arsenal is limited, so far, to small arms, including Kalashnikov and South African G-4 assault rifles, Uzi sub-machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers and 60 mm mortars. The RPA has much of the same as well as heavier weapons, including artillery and anti-aircraft guns, which it has used against ground positions.

Tutsis, Hutus Oppose Increased International Presence

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Nyamiagbe, Rwanda — How to curb the violence in Rwanda and Burundi is the question facing the United Nations Security Council and others. No one has offered a viable plan. The two countries have been fighting civil wars since the early 1990s but have been involved in internecine warfare for centuries. For Burundi, the Security Council has proposed deploying a U.N. peacekeeping force to be paid by permanent member states and composed of soldiers from African nations.

But its Hutu rebels and Tutsi-led army are hostile to the idea, with Tutsi students even taking to the streets to protest in the capital, Bujumbura. In Rwanda, Tutsi leaders are no more eager to see an expanded international presence. They are already leery of U.N. and other human-rights observers who, in addition to monitoring rebel abuses, have recently begun denouncing government abuses.

The rising tide of instability has alarmed both countries’ neighbors, with Tanzania leading an African economic embargo against Burundi over its coup last month. Demonstrating that there are limits to even ethnic alliances, Rwanda unexpectedly signed on, although Defense Minister Paul Kagame initially waffled. Joining the embargo makes him look like a Democrat, thereby lessening the chance that Rwanda, too, might some day become the target of sanctions.

But although the embargo may help persuade Burundi’s leaders to accept some form of accommodation with Hutu politicians, free elections in both countries are still ruled out. Tutsi army leaders talk about interethnic reconciliation, even emphasizing that most Hutus in each country are innocent of participation in past abuses. Yet they remain unwilling to relinquish control of their armies, or to allow a process that is certain to elect Hutu candidates.

Neither are the leaders in either country willing to negotiate with Hutu rebels. Shortly after Burundi’s newly installed leader, Pierre Buyoya, said that he wanted a “frank and honest national debate” with opposition groups including rebel leaders, he announced that his military government plans to stay in power for at least three years.Rwanda’s military leaders are not even willing to talk with the rebels. “What would be the terms of negotiations? ” Lt. Col. Kayizali Caesar asked. “Now the rebels are killing survivors of the genocide. So where is the basis for compromise?”

Instead, both countries’ leaders want the Hutu rebels shut down. Indeed, international observers agree that the military organization the rebels have built in and around refugee camps in eastern Zaire should be dismantled.
The camps from which they operate are well known, and include the ones near Goma at Mugunga and Lac Vert, with about 200,000 people combined. The rebel leadership has even established a headquarters just west of Lac Vert blatantly known as the Etat Major, or High Command.

Farther south near Bukavu, the rebels dominate 100,000 refugees in the camps at Kashusha and Inera. Even farther south near Uvira, Burundian rebels operate among 21,000 refugees in Kanganiro camp.But no one is sure who should break up those armed rebel organizations. The United Nations and its member states have yet to volunteer for the job. Some international observers think Zaire should do it, even though its corrupt and ill-disciplined forces hardly seem up to the task.

Nor has the government led by President Mobutu Sese Seko demonstrated much will to act. Mobutu has threatened since last year to close the camps and expel the refugees, but their presence has made him a key player in the region, and he is using them to obtain favors including foreign aid.

Another problem would be how to separate the perpetrators of Rwanda’s past genocide and other abuses from the other refugees. Even among those who did not participate in the slaughter of Tutsis in 1994, many nonetheless stood by and watched. “On some level everybody” is guilty, one international official said. “But on another, so many of these people are brainwashed about what Tutsi forces would do to them if they were to go home. ”

Central African Conflict: Rwanda and Burundi Sink into Abyss of a Long War

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Nyamiagabe, Rwanda — Recent killings by Hutu rebels in Rwanda and Burundi, and retaliatory attacks by the Tutsi-dominated army in each country indicate that the combatants are digging in for protracted war.

Such a development would scuttle efforts by African leaders and international mediators to bring stability to the East Central African region and prevent widespread bloodletting.

In recent months, Hutu rebels in Burundi and Rwanda have begun making the successful transition from a conventional to an insurgent force, increasingly hiding among the local populations rather than returning to camps in Zaire after attacks, observers say.

They are battling Tutsis who control the government and military in both countries, yet make up only 15 percent of each country’s population. The rebels sometimes coordinate efforts from their respective bases across both countries’ borders in eastern Zaire.

Last month, Hutu rebels massacred more than 300 Tutsi civilians in Gitega province in the heart of Burundi, leading to a coup.

Amnesty International accused the Tutsi-led army of retaliating by killing more than 200 Hutu civilians in the same region during a military operation lasting several days.

Similarly in Rwanda, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that Hutu rebels have killed more than 100 witnesses and other survivors of Hutu-led genocide in Cyangugu, Gisenyi and Ruhengeri provinces near the border with Zaire. In Gisenyi and Ruhengeri, the Tutsi-controlled army has killed at least 132 people suspected of supporting the rebels, the U.N. says.

“Civilians are completely caught in the middle,” said one international observer in Gisenyi. “If they report rebel activity, the rebels will kill them. And if they don’t, the government may kill them. ”

Most of the victims in Rwanda since 1990 have been Tutsis, although its president is a Hutu. More than 500,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were slaughtered by Hutus there in genocide that began in April 1994.

In Burundi, more than 150,000 Tutsis and Hutus have been killed since 1993, after Tutsi army officers assassinated the country’s first elected Hutu president.

The slaughter shows no sign of a letup as the rebel forces move from camps in Zaire to the provinces and assume the role of an insurgency. In recent months, Hutu rebels have infiltrated farther into each country, stoking Tutsi fears and cries for vengeance for the recent genocide, U.N. officials say.

More than 500,000 Tutsis who fled the Hutu regime in Rwanda have also returned, protected by an army of Tutsis that was unable to prevent the genocide against their brethren who never left Rwanda, but who, three frenzied months after it started, overthrew the Hutu government that was responsible for their deaths.

Changing their name from the Rwandan Patriotic Front guerrillas to the Rwandan Patriotic Army, these Tutsi fighters and their military commanders rule Rwanda today.

But deep distrust remains between the government and the governed.

A Tutsi going by the name “Francois” said he never left Rwanda and claimed to get along now with his Hutu and Tutsi neighbors.

As a truckload of soldiers drove by, toward Zaire and the site of recent fighting, Francois was asked what he thought of Rwanda’s new army.

“Bad,” he said in French, immediately raising his hands and extending his fingers as if he were holding a rifle: “They shoot too much. ”

And what about the Hutu rebels?

“No, I’m not with them,” he responded quietly without animation.

Hutus and Tutsis have a long history of enmity.

From the 16th century until independence, Tutsi kings and lords dominated the East Central African region, owning most of the land and cattle and treating the Hutu masses not unlike serfs in medieval Europe.

Tutsi kings had their own ways of dealing with resisters. One was to hang the genitals of their vanquished enemies on a symbol of divine power known as the Kalinga, or sacred drum.

Now the coals of hate are hot again.