Africom’s covert war in Sudan

The devil came in a helicopter
Roger Winter was one of the primary architects of the RPA guerrilla war, organized from Washington in 1989, that has led to the loss of more than 10 or 12 million lives in the Great Lakes of Africa since 1990. Winter acted as a spokesman for the RPF and their allies, and he appeared as a guest on major U.S. television networks such as PBS and CNN. New Yorker writer Philip Gourevitch and Roger Winter made contacts on behalf of the RPA with American media, particularly the Washington Post, New York Times and Time magazine.
Roger Winter moved through Rwanda during the RPA invasion and worked the front lines of the covert war as a key Pentagon and U.S. State Department asset in collaboration with the Kagame RPA operation of terror. From 1990 to 1994, Winter traveled back and forth from the RPA controlled zone to Washington, D.C., where he briefed and coordinated activities and support with U.S. military, intelligence and government officials.
Roger Winter is intimate with USAID and a long-time ally of Susan Rice, former assistant secretary of state on African Affairs (1997-2001), special assistant to President Clinton (1995-1997), and National Security Council insider (1993-1997). Susan Rice is the Obama administration’s ambassador to the United Nations and staunch enemy of Omar al-Bashir.
Roger Winter is also a staunch supporter of U.S. Rep. Donald Payne, one of the leading U.S. Democrats who was pressing for action to “stop genocide” in Darfur, Sudan. Payne sponsored the Darfur Genocide Accountability Act and he was arrested in June 2001, along with John Eibner, director of Christian Solidarity International, for protesting against the GoS.
Christian Solidarity International has a very subversive relationship to “peace” and “religion” in Sudan, and they have been one of the frontrunner organizations peddling the accusations of slavery by the al-Bashir government, in particular; a highly contested and controversial issue generally inflated and manipulated by fundamentalist Jewish and Christian NGOs and missionary organizations, like Christian Solidarity International, Samaritan’s Purse, Servant’s Heart and Freedom Quest International, that operate in Sudan.
“Roger Winter was the chief logistic boss for [RPA] Tutsis as early as mid-1990,” says Ugandan human rights expert Remigius Kintu, “and until their victory in 1994 they were operating from 1717 Massachusetts Aven. N.W. in Washington, D.C. Roger Winter told a [name deleted] South Sudanese exile at the time [1994]: ‘I have now stabilized Rwanda and will turn my full attention to Sudan.’ Winter subsequently closed up shop in Rwanda and based himself in Kampala working on Sudan. A few years later, Darfur exploded and with Winter’s manipulations, Rwanda was the first to send troops into that troubled area. From my sources, the Rwanda Defense Forces [working under the African Union umbrella] have killed civilians and brought in their media experts to pile the blame on Sudanese government troops.”
This is exactly what the Kagame and Museveni terror apparatus has done in Uganda, Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Much of the terror operations of the UPDF/RPF in Rwanda in the 1990s were covered up by Human Rights Watch experts Alison Des Forges (d. February 2009) and Timothy Longman, associate professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Vassar College.
Similarly, throughout the long war in South Sudan, and now in Darfur, the atrocities committed by the U.S.-backed factions were and are downplayed, dismissed or ignored, while those committed by competing factions are amplified and spotlighted. Also, following the pattern of UPDF and RPA criminal activities - such as massacres committed under disguise and/or attributed to the “enemy” - for which there is now a long history of documentation, and given the lack of any true independent evaluation, there is no telling who actually committed the massacres always blamed on the GoS or “Janjaweed” militias.
One Sudanese professional from the South told me recently that it was not the government of Sudan but rather the UPDF and SPLA who were arming the Janjaweed - the so-called Arab militias accused of wanton killing in an Arab-against-Black genocide. (This Arab-on-Black genocide has been widely discredited.)
Professor Timothy Longman and Alison Des Forges co-produced the fat treatise on “genocide” in Rwanda, “Leave None to Tell the Story,” published in 1999. Longman and Des Forges produced numerous documents - based on field investigations in Congo (Zaire), Rwanda and Burundi from 1995 to 2008 - touted as independent and unbiased human rights reports but always skewed by hidden interests. Both Longman and Des Forges had relationships with the U.S. Department of State, National Security Council and Pentagon, both were regular consultants with USAID and they certainly worked with Roger Winter, the Pentagon’s secret weapon in Sudan.
On Sept. 25, 2008, a Ukrainian freighter was seized by “pirates” off the coast of Somalia and was held until a ransom of $3.2 million was paid on Feb. 5, 2009. Somali fishermen disenfranchised by international dumping of toxic - and possibly nuclear - wastes off Somalia are labeled “pirates” when they fight for their rights and freedoms.
The MV Faina is registered in Belize, owned by a company registered in Panama and piloted by Ukrainians. The MV Faina carried 33 Soviet T-72 battle tanks, grenade-launchers, anti-aircraft guns and ammunition en route to Mombasa, Kenya, the Pentagon’s primary base on the east coast of Africa.
The U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet monitored the Ukrainian ship during the four-month standoff, with the MV Faina pinned down by at least six U.S. and four European warships. The ship’s owner is Israeli national Vadim Alperin (alias Vadim Oltrena Alperin), said to be a Mossad agent involved with clandestine activities through offshore front companies and money laundering. The ship was unloaded in Mombasa on Feb. 12, and the weapons are destined for Juba, South Sudan.
There are reports that weaponry also included tank munitions sporting deadly depleted uranium and that the final recipients are the Israeli-backed Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) “rebels” in Darfur. Sudan has previously accused Israel of supporting “rebels” in the Darfur war. International arms syndicates and dealers routinely transfer “Soviet-era” arms for international organized crime, including covert military operations involving proxy militias and national governments in Sudan, Uganda, Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and Rwanda.
Keith Harmon Snow is a frequent contributor to Op-Ed News, where this article first appeared. To learn more, visit his website, All Things Pass, and Friends of the Congo. He can be reached at [email protected].
http://www.opednews.com/articles/AFRICOM-S-CO...ow-090305-83.html[/B]

Arabic Forum