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USA SALES OF ARMS TO AFRICA

In the Cold War (1950-1989), the U.S. delivered over $1.5 billion worth of weaponry to Africa. Many of the top U.S. arms clients – Liberia, Somalia, the Sudan, and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo or DRC) – have turned out to be the top basket cases of the 1990s in terms of violence, instability, and economic collapse. The U.S. prolonged the rule of Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Soko by providing more than $300 million in weapons and $100 million in military training. Mobutu used his U.S.-supplied arsenal to repress his own people and plunder his nation’s economy for three decades, until his brutal regime was overthrown by Laurent Kabila’s forces in 1997. When Kabila took power, the Clinton administration quickly offered military support by developing a plan for new training operations with the armed forces. As U.S. weapons deliveries to Africa continue to rise, the Clinton administration did a wave of new military training programs in Africa. Between 1991-1998, U.S. weapons and training deliveries to Africa totaled more than $227 million. In 1998 alone, direct weapons transfers and IMET training totaled $20.1 million. And, under the Pentagon’s Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, U.S. special forces have trained military personnel from at least 34 of Africa’s 53 nations, including troops fighting on both sides of the DRC’s civil war – from Rwanda and Uganda (supporting the rebels) to Zimbabwe and Namibia (supporting the Kabila regime).

Between 1995-1998 U.S. special forces carried out JCET training in approx 34 of the 53 African countries, including Namibia, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zimbabwe – all fighting in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo) – as well as Mozambique, Cote d’Ivorie, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tunisia, Cameroon, Botswana.

USA SALES OF ARMS TO ZAIRE

U.S. prolonged the rule of Zairian dictator Mobutu Sese Soko by providing more than $300 million in weapons and $100 million in military training. Mobutu used his U.S.-supplied arsenal to repress his own people and plunder his nation’s economy for three decades with no resisteance from Clinton. It wasn't until his brutal regime was overthrown by Laurent Kabila’s forces in 1997. U.S. helped build Mobutu’s arsenal with a fleet of C-130 transport aircraft and a steady supply of rifles, ammunition, trucks, jeeps, patrol boats, and communications equipment. By the time the dictator was ousted in 1997, the U.S. had delivered more than $300 million (measured in constant 1998 dollars) in military hardware to Mobutu’s regime. His country was reduced to a mess with many people exterminated. When Kabila took power he fuelled ethnic hatred tribe against tribe & the USA did little to stop it. The Clinton administration offered military support to Kabila. One Belgian arms dealer was arrested in South Africa for selling 8,000 U.S. M16 rifles from Vietnam War era arsenals to Kabila’s forces. In fact, many of these illicit arms traffickers working in Central Africa got their start as covert operators for the U.S.

SALES OF ARMS TO RWANDA

U.S. special forces have trained military personnel from at least 34 of Africa’s 53 nations, including troops fighting on both sides of the DRC’s civil war – from Rwanda and Uganda (supporting the rebels) to Zimbabwe and Namibia (supporting the Kabila regime). The Arms Fixers: Controlling the Brokers and Shipping Agents, the weapons suppliers to the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda included brokers and shippers in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and France, working with collaborators in Albania, Belgium, Bulgaria, Egypt, Italy, Israel, the Seychelles, and the former Zaire so they join the USA as arms suppliers

U.S. Military Assistance in Africa’s First World War

In 1998 alone, U.S. weapons to Africa totaled $12.5 million, including substantial deliveries to Chad, Namibia, and Zimbabwe – all now backing Kabila. On the rebel side, Uganda received nearly $1.5 million in weaponry over the past two years, and Rwanda was importing U.S. weapons as late as 1993 (one year before the brutal genocide erupted). U.S. military transfers in the form of direct government-to-government weapons deliveries, commercial sales, and IMET training to the states directly involved has totaled more than $125 million since the end of the Cold War

Often, the U.S. offered weapons and military assistance to a repressive government with one hand while raising the other in the name of securing democracy and promoting stability. Inevitably, somewhere down the line the regime collapses, and U.S. policy-makers are left struggling to re-write their lines. Once a new government takes power, the cycle reemerges with the same old offers of U.S. military training to help "secure democracy." Despite the astounding regularity with which the policy of arming African governments has failed, U.S. policy-makers have been unable (or unwilling) to develop effective non-military forms of engagement.

Source: http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/congo.htm

USA ARMS AFGHAN MUJAHIDEEN WITH STINGERS:

1,000 Stinger missiles, which the US Central Intelligence Agency gave to the Afghan mujahideen fighting the Soviet army in the 1980s.The CIA has been able to track down and buy back some of those missiles but many are unaccounted for, and some ended up with rebel groups in Algeria, Chechnya, and Tajikistan. Others are thought to have been captured by Iran, with still others sent by Pakistan to China where engineers designed a copycat version.

USA SOLD STINGERS TO GUERRILLAS who have onsold some: The CIA supplied hundreds of surface-to-air Stinger missiles to Afghan guerrillas fighting the former Soviet-backed regime in the late 1980s. In 1986, Congress approved the deal and CIA shipped 300 Stingers to Afghanistan and 1987 = 700. It is estimated that between 50 to 100 missiles remain unaccounted for. The USA offered to buy back the remaining missiles for $80,000 each+ but then if they had got them free in the first place an yone owning one would now be able to triple this offer & sell to Iran/ China/ North Korea for whatever. So No TAKERS & yet the USA can dictate to other countries yet walk away from Afghanistan as they did when the Taliban took over. So some stingers must be in Al Queda hands or sold to Iran to be copied by North Korea. What has Pakistan done with their share of stingers & although USA claims the mechanisms are useless after a few years bet your life the ingenuity of the Pakis has changed this as they have sold some to China to copy & have they palmed a few more off for $$$ like Khan did with nuclear secrets!!! Now today Russia has made their own SAM-14 Gremlin, a virtual copy of the Stinger. What a mess the USA created. What a mess the USA created. USA war-profiteers, manufacturers & defense contractors who happen to be statesmen, rake in billions of tax-payers hard-earned money but being themselves "merchants of death"

Kathy Gannon’s book I is for Infidel: From the Holy War to Holy Terror: 18 Years Inside Afghanistan, 2005, Perseus Book Group, on the war in Afghanistan is “yesterday’s war”.  “The wider world had done the most dangerous of things. It had stuffed this tiny country with massive amounts of weapons, including the precious Stingers, turned over the countryside to the volatile discordant mix of mujahadeen factions—and then walked away.”

USA ARMS NOREIGA IN PANAMA:

General Noriega became commander-in-chief of the National Guard in Panama in 1983, and for the next six years was more powerful than the President. He was the kind of ruthless leader the US favored in the rest of Central America. Noriega first met with then CIA Director George Bush in 1976, while Noriega was collecting $100 thousand a year as a CIA asset. Their friendly relationship persisted even after Noriega's drug dealing was revealed by a 1975 DEA investigation. During the Reagan era, Noriega collaborated with Oliver North on covert actions against Nicaragua, training contras and providing a transshipment point for CIA supported operations that flew weapons to the contras and cocaine into the US.

USA AND POL POT:

Pol Pot emptied the cities of Cambodia , forcing the people into the countryside to their deaths. Nearly all educated people were killed and more than 1.5 million people perished in this "holocaust". Only when the Khmer Rouge was ousted by Vietnam in 1979, did the terror stop. Washington took steps to preserve the Khmer Rouge as a counter force to the Vietnamese. International relief agencies were pressured by the US to provide food and humanitarian assistance to the Khmer Rouge, which had fled to Thailand, and the US sent military aid as well. In 1982, in an effort to isolate the Vietnamese, the US forced together the three contending anti-Vietnamese groups, insisting that the Khmer Rouge be part of the negotiations. Together with the US, Britain helped to legitimize the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970's and early 1980's, following their alleged genocide of over one million people in Cambodia, by continuing to recognize at the United Nations the Khmer Rouge as the legitimate government of Cambodia. In the 1980's, the SAS also covertly trained guerrillas allied to the Khmer Rouge (and the Khmer Rouge directly, according to journalist John Pilger) in the use of weapons and mine- laying techniques. [This proves that the comparison of the Khmer Rouge with the Communist Party of Perú is stupid and ridiculous!]

USA AND ETHIOPIA:

Ethiopia was the poorest nation in Africa. Under Selassie, Ethiopia received more US aid than any other African country and Washington purchased a $2 million yacht for the Emperor. When Selassie faced an uprising in the province of Eritrea, the US sent advisors and arms to help him smash the revolt. In return for the support, Selassie provided the United States with a naval oasis in the Red Sea and a place for a strategic communications station. Selassie's kindness to his animals was his downfall; he was overthrown when photos of him feeding his dogs during the 1973 famine were circulated among his outraged troops who had little to eat.

USA AND PAKISTAN:

Yes under General Mohammod Zia Ul-Haq 70% of the world's high grade heroin was run directly via the Government & under Bush the USA were oblivious. The USA was unwilling to press for drug arrests that might embarrass a government so closely tied to Washington & noone was arrested but Zia got $3 billion in 1982, of which over half was for weapons. Zia died in a mysterious plane crash in 1988 after a life of torturing his opponants & Kissenger called Pakistan a "frontline state" defending "free people everywhere'. However the worst case was Khan the nuclear scientist who sold nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea yet is still free on home arrest??? The west did nothing to stop it. [ Khan Nuclear Terrorist ] Congress has considered proposals to spend $3 billion over the next five years to train and equip Pakistan’s military for counterinsurgency warfare. That aid would come on top of $7.5 billion in civilian assistance.

USA AND UZBEKISTAN arming dictators:

American military had access to an air base in Uzbekistan supporting its operations in Afghanistan and has embraced Uzbekistan as a partner in fighting Islamist terrorist groups. Critics say this has emboldened a dictatorial government in which torture and repression are routine and freedom of worship, assembly and speech are restricted. Karimov, absolute ruler of Uzbekistan since the 1991 Soviet collapse every cent generated by Uzbekistan's vast resources goes straight into Islam Karimov's pocket. His parsimony extends even to his thuggish militsia (military police): rather than pay them a realistic salary, he grants them free reign to coerce, rob, jail and even murder at will. Not only do the militsia pay for themselves, their lawless behavior ensures loyalty. Every cop knows that his neighbors would kill him were Karimov to disappear. Bush Administration officials, so strident when promoting liberation through regime change in Iraq, Ukraine and, ironically, when Islamists overthrew the democratically-elected Kyrgyz president--have downplayed the Uzbek massacre. "After 9/11," explains Newsweek, "the Bush administration established a strategic partnership with Karimov, with $500 million for a military base in southern Uzbekistan in preparation for operations in Afghanistan and paying $60 million or more a year in military aid and training." Bush was aware of Karimov's horrific record back in 2001. That year's Human Rights Watch report on Uzbekistan put its "conservative estimate" of Uzbek political prisoners at 7,000. According to HRW: "Prison guards systematically beat prisoners with wooden and rubber truncheons and exacted particularly harsh punishment on those convicted on religious charges, subjecting them to additional beatings...Torture remained endemic in pretrial custody as well." George W. Bush didn't mind. He accorded Karimov all the honors of a full state visit to the White House shortly thereafter.

How can the United States claim to be fighting a war on terrorism when its biggest allies are terrorists themselves? Source: http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0525-28.htm

UK ALSO ANOTHER ARMS DEALER:

Rwanda in 1994 a million people were killed in a planned strategy of mass murder. Britain was a key member of the UN Security Council reducing UN's troop in Rwanda in April 1994, sending a green light to the killers. As the killings mounted, the government-followed by the media-carried on identifying the war as "civil strife" when what was taking place was a planned strategy of mass killing. Terming it "civil war" served to absolve external actors of responsibility for helping to stop it, as in Bosnia. Britain also helped the Security Council to reject describing the killings as "genocide" - to have done so would have compelled them, under the terms of the Geneva Convention, to "prevent and punish" those responsible. Along with other states on the Security Council, Britain also allowed the Rwandan government to retain its seat on the Council during the massacres, even as its ambassador delivered a speech blaming the victims (by then numbering around 200,000) for the killings.

USA NICARAGUA AND IRAN:

Joseph O'Toole, a former colonel in the U.S. Army who was arrested in the 1980s for allegedly illegally selling arms to Iran along with Israeli Ari Ben-Menashe, is mentioned in the case. In 1991, O'Toole was exonerated of suspicions against him. Ben-Menashe left Israel and now lives in Canada, having falsely claimed for years that he was a secret adviser of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, the National Security Council staffer facilitated the secret Iran arms deals and helped divert $12 million from those arms sales to the Nicaraguan Contras. Reagan saw the left-wing regime as a beachhead for Communist subversion in Central America and was determined to support an antigovernment insurgency mounted by the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance, generally known as the contras. The war was unpopular with Congress, however, in part because of the contras' ties to the corrupt Nicaraguan regime the Sandinistas had supplanted. But in December 1983, Congress imposed a cap of $24 million on spending by the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY to aid the contras

USA AND SOMALIA: JUNE 2009

United States is providing urgent military aid to Somalia's Transitional Federal Government, the TFG, to help it repel what is termed an "onslaught" by Islamist rebels. U.S. officials are also renewing their criticism of alleged Eritrean support for Somali extremists. The Obama administration, which has given strong political support to the besieged Somali administration, is backing that up with an emergency shipment of weapons and ammunition help prevent a militant takeover of the chronically-unstable African state.The U.S. arms aid, first reported Thursday by the Washington Post newspaper, was confirmed by State Department spokesman Ian Kelly, who said the supplies were being conveyed to the TFG on an urgent basis in response to an appeal by the Mogadishu authorities.Hanoch Miller, an Israeli arms merchant, allegedly made illegal arms sales to Somalia, forging documents, money laundering and violating the UN arms embargo on Somalia. Miller at a Florida district court, was arrested with an unnamed American partner for alleged involvement in the sale of hundreds of AK-47s to the government of Somaliland, a breakaway district in Somalia since 1991.

BUT WHATS THE DIFFERENCE WITH RUSSIAN VICTOR BOUT AND THE USA & other Western Nations SUPPLYING ARMS TO MANY DICTATORS FOR THEIR OWN WANTS.