Rwandan Civil Servants Were Not in Any Position to Leave Their Functions (Reyntgens).

Hirondelle News Agency
21 September 2007

Rwandan civil servants in disagreement with the policy that led to the genocide were not in any position to leave their functions, explained Friday to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian historian specializing in Rwanda.

Questioned in connection with Joseph Kanyabashi, the mayor of Ngoma (Butare prefecture), for who he came to testify for, Reyntjens explained why civil servants could not give up their posts without risking their lives.

He said that Enoch Ruhigira, the former director of the cabinet of the president of the Republic, had tried to refuse retaking his post at the time of a government change and that that had been refused to him. He had then taken refuge at his neighbour’s residence, the ambassador of Belgium, and that the ambassador was able to get him out of the country secretly.

"Kanyabashi, explained Reyntjens, did not have as a neighbour the ambassador of Belgium, he did not have soldiers or a Belgian plane to flee to Kenya, if he had tried to flee to the Burundian border he would have been killed before arriving there". "He could not flee because that would have been to express a dissension with what was going to happen" he added.

The Rwandan genocide, which lasted from 7 April to 4 July 1994, resulted in the death of 800 000 people from the Tutsi community and among moderate Hutus. Kanyabashi is on trial in the trial known as Butare alongside a minister, his son, two prefects and two mayors.

This trial began on 6 June 2001. Kanyabashi is the second to last defendant to present his case. He has been detained since 1995.

Breaking News: One of General Nkunda's Top Officials Arrested in Rwanda.

Shortly after Rwandan Foreign Minister Charles Murigande left the Congo after his discussions with FM Nyamwisi over the siuation in North Kivu, Colonel Patient Mwendanga, former governor of South Kivu and a CNDP political advisor to General Nkundabatware, was arrested in Gisenyi, Rwanda. He was travelling with a Belgian passport, which has empirically opened a link to establish what connections exist between Nkunda/CNDP and certain Belgian officials along with the former Mobutists in exile in Belgium, such as General Baramoto, who was recently arrested in Kisangani and deported from the after visiting Goma, which sources claim included contact with General Nkundabatware. Additionally, General Nkundabatware himself admitted the Belgian Defense Attache in Congo was a vistor to his Kiloliwe home in an interview with Le Soft.

It is also clear there is a link between Mobutists exiled in Belgium and South Africa to Jean-Pierre Bemba and the MLC, as both groups have long opposed President Kabila. Mobutists in South Africa reportedly supported the fighting in Kinshasa back in March, which American journalist Wayne Madsen reported as a coup attempt instigated by Senator Bemba. President Kabila's recent trip to Brussels after stopping in Goma was to raise these very issues as he heads to the UN headquarters in NY to meet face-to-face with Senator Bemba to work out the terms of his return to Congo, which includes the issue of lifting Senator Bemba's diplomatic immunity, a hot topic in the Congolese National Assembly.

Great Lakes: Civil Society Wants to Preserve Peace

MISNA
21 September 2007

“This is a singular period for out respective countries, which threatens all the efforts made by the international community and by internal live forces” said 20 human rights activists from RD Congo, Rwanda e Burundi, meeting these days in Bukavu in eastern Congo. The participants deplored that “in the process of consolidation of peace there had been no organization of civil society representatives from all three countries”. The fighting in recent weeks by militias in North Kivu (RdCongo) between the army and dissidents militants have rekindled tensions at the border with Rwanda, while there are thousands of refugees who need humanitarian aid; in Burundi, said a human rights activist, ‘we witness every day a disheartening policies while security could worsen still…even because of a visible increase of weapons among the people”.

Clan Fighting in South

MISNA
21 September 2007

At least five people were killed in violent fighting between rival clans in southern Somalia. According to local sources, armed groups tied to clans of the Lower Juba region, Ogaden and Galje’el, yesterday engaged in heavy fighting in the area of the natural port of Buurgaabo. The motive remains unclear of what sparked the fighting, in which a high though unconfirmed number of people were wounded, though each side attributes the other responsibility. According to some sources, the fighting erupted over control of the area and is part of a vaster conflict between the clans underway for months in the Kismaayo area, third city of Somalia, involving militants of the Marhan clan.

ICTR Suspects Released

IOL News
19 September 2007

A Paris appeals court on Wednesday ordered the release of two Rwandans sought on genocide charges by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR).

Wenceslas Munyeshyaka, a 49-year-old Catholic priest, and Laurent Bucyibaruta, 62, a former government official, had been detained in France for a second time on September 6 on new warrants issued by the ICTR.

They were first detained on July 20.

"The court ordered your release on probation," said presiding judge Edith Boizette.

Lawyers for the two men had said that there was no risk that they would flee if released from custody.

The appeals court recommended that the two men be handed to the ICTR. It is due to give a verdict on the validity of arrest warrants issued by the ICTR on September 26.

The warrants accuse the men of genocide, rape, murder and extermination. They deny the charges.

They face similar charges in France where they have been on probation since 1995.

They were first arrested on July 20 but freed 12 days later when a French court ruled that warrants from the ICTR were invalid.

UN Extends Prosecutors' Mandates.

UN News Service
18 September 2007

The Security Council recently agreed to extend the mandates of the current chief prosecutors Hassan Bubacar Jallow and Carla Del Ponte at the United Nations war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia respectively.

Hassan Bubacar Jallow was re-appointed to a four-year term at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), effective 15th September, after a resolution passed unanimously by Council members.

The resolution allows for Mr. Jallow’s appointment to be terminated if the ICTR, which is based in Arusha, Tanzania, completes its work before September 2011.

By a resolution adopted with 14 votes in favour and only the Russian Federation abstaining, the Council agreed to extend the mandate of Carla Del Ponte at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) until 31 December this year, in line with a request from Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The resolution adopted 14th September noted “the need to ensure a smooth transition between the departure of Ms. Carla Del Ponte and the assumption of office of her successor” and that Mr. Ban intends to submit the name of his nominee to succeed Ms. Del Ponte.

Ms. Del Ponte, whose mandate began in 1999, is the third chief prosecutor at the ICTY, which is based in The Hague in the Netherlands.

Explaining his abstention, the representative of the Russian Federation said his country had doubts about Ms. Del Ponte’s understanding of her mandate.

“Instead of carrying out the profoundly professional duties of a jurist employed by the international community to support an impartial prosecution in the Tribunal, for the present Chief Prosecutor, the priority has become functions of being some kind of quasi-political player who has had the audacity to write a prescription in the area of international relations,” he said.

North Kivu: Surprise Visit of President Kabila in Goma

MISNA
19 September 2007

Democratic Republic of Congo President Joseph Kabila arrived this morning on a surprise visit in the city of Goma, provincial capital of North Kivu. According to local radios, the agenda has not been disclosed of the visit, of which even the provincial authorities were not informed. Security in the strife-torn area of DR-Congo will in all probability be the focus of the works. The situation deteriorated in North Kivu, theatre to growing tension over the past months, at the end of August after an attack against Congolese regular armed forces by militants loyal to the pro-Rwandan dissident general Laurent Nkunda. Over two-weeks of fighting has caused tens of thousands of civilians to flee the area, many of which gathered outside Goma in refugee camps. The issue of security along the eastern borders with Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi two days ago was the focus point of a summit between the Foreign and Defence ministers of the four nations in Kampala.

Residents Flees After Puntland-Somaliland Clashes

MISNA
19 September 2007

Scores of families have fled their homes around the village of Abeseoley, in the northern Sool region, following a clash on Monday between forces from the self-declared republic of Somaliland and the semi-autonomous region of Puntland in Somalia. According to Somaliland officials, at least three fighters were killed in the battle; while other sources refer that two nomads herding goats were killed in the exchange of artillery. Residents of the area refer that the people are fleeing in direction of Las Anod, capital of the region 22km south of Abeseoley. Puntland local government officials accused the Somaliland troops of beginning the battle, while Somaliland claims that the fighting is between clans and that its soldiers have no part. Sovereignty over the regions of Sool and Sanag, in northern Somalia, has always been a source of dispute: geographically they fall within the borders of Somaliland, but most of the inhabitants are members of the larger Darod clan, like those of Puntland.

THE AKAZU TERM WAS CREATED FOR THE PURPOSE OF "POLITICAL MARKETING"

Hirondelle News Agency
17 September 2007

The term "Akazu" (small house in kinyarwanda) was created by the Democratic Republican Movement (MDR) for the purpose of "political marketing", explained Monday at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) the former Rwandan minister for Foreign Affairs Jerome Bicamumpaka, one of the founders of this movement.

"For political marketing purposes we needed a target" explained Bicamumpaka at the resumption of his testimony for his own defence. He explained why the "studies and programs" commission of the MDR had proposed this name in February 1992. One of the members of this commission, a linguist by the name of Boniface Ngurinzira, proposed this term to indicate those who surrounded the president without being officially designated or elected. This proposal was adopted by the political office of the MDR and used in various official statements before being used by all of the political opposition, the former minister underlined.

The akazu, whose membership is still mentioned in many ICTR indictments, according to experts, represents the inner circle of President Habyarimana, of which no administrative promotion or appointment was possible without their support.

The wife of the president, Agathe Habyarimana, is accused of having led this occult group without international justice ever worrying her.

The MDR, which Bicamumpaka was presented as one of the founders, had been created in July 1991, a month after the adoption of the law instating the multi-party system. It quickly established itself in the country, becoming the main legal opposition party to the National Republican Movement for Democracy and Development (MRND), former single party. A schism divided the MDR, some of its members joining the extremists and the others the moderates.

Rwanda, according to the 1991 census, counted 60% of its citizens of less than 21 years of age, explained Bicamumpaka. Also it was necessary, according to him, to have massive adhesions to the new party, in particular from the rural classes "because we wanted to change things", he continued. The defendant finally denied that the MDR ever maintained a militia. It is, however, public knowledge that the party had a youth wing called JDR.

Reytjens Returns to the ICTR at the Request of the Defense.

Hirondelle News Agency
18 September 2007

Professor Filip Reyntjens, a Belgian historian specializing in Rwanda who had announced in 2005 his intention not to collaborate furthermore with the prosecution of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) as long as it would not have indicted elements of the of the RPF, began Tuesday to testify in favour of an ICTR defendant.

This defence testimony for Joseph Kanyabashi, the former mayor of Ngoma, should last two weeks. Kanyabashi is on trial with five other persons in the Butare trial which started in June 2001. He has pled not guilty. The Reyntjens' testimony was still at its beginning in early afternoon, before adjournment until Wednesday, while debating on the qualifications of the witness.

The Belgian historian, an expert witness in several trials at the ICTR, author of several works on Rwanda and the 1994 genocide, had on 11 January 2005 announced that he would not collaborate furthermore with the services of the prosecutor as long as they would not have indicted members of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), the former rebellion, in power for the past ten years in Kigali.

In a letter addressed to the prosecutor, he had written that the failure of the ICTR to prosecute those who committed war crimes or crimes against humanity was equivalent to "recognizing victors' justice", and made the ICTR run the risk "of becoming a part of the problem rather than of the solution".

He had then reminded that the special investigations had gathered "concordant evidence of many massacres committed by the RPF in 1994". These crimes, he wrote, "are within the framework of the ICTR mandate, they are well documented, the testimonies and the material evidence exists and the identities of the RPF suspects are known". By not prosecuting the RPF, the historian added, the ICTR is missing one of its objectives, "to contribute to the national reconciliation, the restoration and the preservation of peace".

In a book recently published, the spokesperson for Carla del Ponte, former prosecutor of the ICTR, tells that these special investigations were abandoned in 2003 on pressure from the United States. The current prosecutor Hassan Jallow retorts, when he is questioned on this subject, that the results of these investigations are under examination.

Security Tightened at US Embassy in Burundi

2007-09-18
Burundi Realités Agence Press

Police forces tightened security near the residence of the American Ambassador in the Rohero part of the capital city of Bujumbura yesterday. The police gave no specific explanation for their action, but indicate that they have reason to believe that security could be disturbed in this area. Unverified sources indicate that an important personality from America will visit Burundi and this measure was taken to prevent any terrorist attack that may be carried out by Al Qaeda.

This comes after the wing of the Uprona party loyal to Aloys Rubuka held a meeting in an area that is close to the residence of the Ambassador on Saturday 15 September in order to reaffirm the dismissal of the current Vice-President of the Republic, Dr Martin Nduwimana, from the party.

The interior ministry had previously suspended any meeting of the two different wings of Uprona in order to prevent the two factions from clashing, but the meeting of the wing loyal to Aloys Rubuka alone did take place since the police were unable to stop it as they did not know its venue or time.

In the wake of this controversial meeting, security was tightened on the Mutanga campus of the University of Burundi on Sunday September 16th after a communiqué calling for a meeting of members of Uprona was issued. The police interpreted this message to mean that demonstrations were to be staged by supporters of the two wings, potentially resulting in violence.

United States Approves $698 mln (U.S.) Grant for Tanzania

Reuters
18 September 2007

The United States on Tuesday approved a $698 million five-year grant to boost Tanzania's road networks, power and water supply, the U.S. government's Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) said.

Investors and residents in the east African nation of 40 million people have long complained that unstable power supplies and poor roads were major impediments to business.

Tanzania's electricity supply was put to the test last year after drought in late 2005 led to a drop in hydropower generation and culminated in extensive power rationing. Many industries were forced to resort to costly diesel generators.

MCC said in a statement that Tanzania had developed a programme to address infrastructure problems.

"Chosen by Tanzanians, the investments to improve the transport, energy, and water sectors will provide a catalyst to reduce poverty and spur economic growth," MCC said in a statement issued in Washington.

Tanzania is among Africa's largest recipients of donor aid, with 42 percent of its 2007-08 budget funded by donors.

The Millennium Challenge says it gives grants to countries that have shown a commitment to reforms and are eligible for aid under the Millennium Challenge programme, which President George W. Bush's administration launched in 2002.

Other African nations that have received MCC grants are Madagascar, Cape Verde, Benin, Ghana, Mali, Mozambique, Lesotho and Morocco.

Editor's Note: This comes after Tanzania's announcement to build a second oil pipeline to Dar es Salaam in order to compete with Kenya's oil pipeline linkup to Uganda, which will also stretch into Rwanda, which will drastically cut into Tanzania's profits in private businesses and in taxes. Just another case of selective infrastructure aid.

Chiquita Company Only Fined for Dealing With Paramilitary.

MISNA
18 September 2007

With a public admission of guilt and the payment of a $25-million fine, decided today by a court in Washington DC, the top executives of the ‘Chiquita Brand’ banana multinational settled any further judicial procedures over the company’s links to the Colombian right-wing AUC (United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia) paramilitary group. District Judge Royce Lambert in fact approved a plea agreement reached last March between Chiquita executives and the US government.

“With the payment of $25-million, an insignificant sum for a multinational like ‘Chiquita Brand’, impunity will reign for people who in one way or another were accomplices to horrendous crimes committed by self-defence groups”, said Colombia’s Justice Minister Carlos Holguín Sardii. Also in the US, the prosecutor Jonathan Malis defined the negotiation between Washington and the company as “morally repugnant”. Chiquita still faces a civil lawsuit brought in July by families of the 173 people killed by the paramilitaries in banana production areas. In march the company admitted to paying at least $1.7 million - through its Banadex affiliate – to AUC paramilitaries between 1997 and 2004 for the protection of its employees in the northern regions of Urabá (Antioquia) and Santa Marta (Magdalena).

Fighting Between Rebels and Army on Border With Sudan

MISNA
18 September 2007

Heavy fighting erupted between rebels and government forces last night in east Chad, along the border with Darfur, the western Sudanese region theatre since 2003 to an internal conflict. As referred to MISNA by local sources, the rebels of the Union of National Forces of Chad (UFNT, ‘Union des Forces Nationales Tchadiennes’), among the many groups present in the east that aim to overthrow the government of President Idriss Deby, clashed with a column of government soldiers near Adré, along the border with Sudan. After two hours of fighting, on which there is still no official confirmation, the rebels managed to seize control of the location of Hileket, near Adré, according to sources close to the rebels. Based on a preliminary toll referred by the rebel group, 17 Chadian soldiers were killed, 14 wounded and 15 were taken prisoner in the fighting. No toll was given on casualties suffered by the UFNT.

Former U.S. Ambassador Krueger Publishes a Book on the Assassination of Ndadaye and the Coup of 1993.

2007-09-17
Burundi Réalités Agence Presse

It was long known that the former US Ambassador to Burundi Robert Krueger was writing a book on Burundi. More precisely, on the 1993 coup d'etat which resulted in the assassination of the democratically elected president Melchior Ndadaye. This book, 'From Bloodshed to Hope in Burundi,' has just come out. Burundians will undoubtedly read it with the hope of finding evidence implicating the country’s leaders at that time, particularly the executive of UPRONA, high ranking military officers and President Pierre Buyoya, in the brutal murder of President Ndadaye, who had beaten Buyoya in the 1993 presidential elections. Ambassador Krueger states that Kamana, who was the brains behind the assassination of Ndadaye and has often been accused of being responsible for the president’s death, was only a secondary character in the putsch that triggered a civil war causing thousands of deaths. In the following extract from the first chapter, the role of colonel Bikomagu is also clearly articulated.

As she was being driven away, she looked back and saw Col. Bikomagu speaking to the troops. In words remarkably reminiscent of Pontius Pilate's, he told them as he pointed to Ndadaye, "He is the one you were looking for. Here he is. Do whatever you want with him." And with that, Bikomagu, the deputy minister of defense, and Nibizi, the officer directly responsible for presidential security, turned and walked away.

Ndadaye was then put in a jeep and driven to the nearby camp of the 1st Parachute Battalion. Bikomagu, Nibizi, and Gakoryo followed in a Land Rover, hungry jackals nearing a kill. At the parachutists' camp, the troops were spread out, some sitting, others lying lazily on the grass around the parade grounds and basketball court. Inside the battalion commandant's office sat François Ngeze, wearing a grey jogging suit and "looking like a fat worm," according to one observer. He was waiting for his moment of triumph, when he could be presented to the troops as their new president.

Meanwhile, in another office inside, ten lower-ranking officers were given the task of killing the president. According to the coroner's report, Ndadaye was held with a cord around his neck while being pierced by bayonets, seven of the fourteen stabbings penetrating the thorax, thereby causing his lungs to fill with blood.

The president's body was left lying in the office where he had collapsed, for troops to witness and to mock. The assassins had so little respect for their president, world opinion, or common decency—and so little understanding of what it meant to depose a head of state and slaughter the principal leaders of a freely elected government—that they dug a mass grave right in the military camp. Into it they tossed the bodies of Melchior Ndadaye, President of the Republic; Pontien Karibwami, Vice President and speaker of the National Assembly; Gilles Bimazubute, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly; Juvénal Ndayikeza, minister of lands and communal development; and Richard Ndikumwami, Director of Intelligence.

Some hours later, upon realizing the world's outrage at the assassinations, army leaders ordered the bodies exhumed so that they might be collected by their families. The soldiers took the bodies, some bayoneted, some shot, all battered and filthy, and dropped each one into a simple wooden coffin. The followers and families were then allowed to fetch the coffins, take them to the morgue, and prepare for a state funeral.

President Jammeh Shuffles Cabinet.

FOROYAA Newspaper (Serrekunda)
17 September 2007

On Friday 14 September 2007, President Yahya Jammeh completed the reshuffling of his cabinet which entailed new appointments, reassignments and redeployments.

The four new entrants are Mr. Abdoulie Momodou Sallah; as SoS for Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology, Mr. Mass Axi Gai; as SoS for Youth, Sports and Religious Affairs, Mr. Ousman Jammeh, the current Secretary General and Head of the Civil Service, to also serve as SoS for Petroleum, Energy and Mineral Resources and Mrs. Marie Saine Firdaus, as Attoney General and So S for Justice.


Two reassignments were made for Mr. Crispin Grey-Johnson, from Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology to SoS for Foreign Affairs and National Assembly Matters and Mr. Kebba Sanyang, from Attorney General and SoS for Justice to SoS for Works, Construction and Infrastructure.

The two former Secretaries of State who are now said to be redeployed to the diplomatic missions are Mr. Bala Garba Jahumpa, Foreign Affairs and Mr. Sheikh Omar Faye, from Youth, Sports and Religious Affairs.

Abdoulie Momodou Sallah

Mr. Sallah, who was one time the So S for Health and Social Welfare, was born in 1944 in Niamina Sambang, in the Central River Region.

Mr. Sallah attended Dankunku Primary School in 1953 to 1957. He also attended the Methodist Boys High School and Gambia High School. Sallah then attended the University of Ibadan, Nigeria from 1965 to 1969.

Sallah also attended many professional courses such as Management Services course, Staff Training officer course, General Management course and a law course at Holborn College, Wooldridge in London.

Mr. Sallah, who served in several portfolios, was Assistant Divisional Commissioner for Western Division from 1965 to 1970.

- Assistant Commissioner for MID 1970 to 1971.

- Secretary, Public Service Commission (PSC) 1971 to 1973.

- High Commissioner/Ambassador to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire between February 1995 to June 1997. Gambia's representative to the United Nations, 1997 and 1998, president of the UN Security Council during the month of March 1998.

Mr. Abdoulie Sallah's final assignment was the Secretary of State for Health and Social Welfare in December 1999 to April 2001.

He is newly appointed as the Secretary of State for Higher Education, Research and Technology, replacing Crispin Grey-Johnson.

Mass Axi Gai

Mass Axi Gai, the newly appointed Secretary of State for Youth, Sports and Religious Affairs, has promised to do his best in his new office.

Speaking to Foroyaa on Sunday, September 16, Mr. Gai said currently football is the only growing and popular game in The Gambia, and he hoped to popularise other sporting activities among the youthful populace.

The new SoS said a large percentage of the country's population are youths and developing them means developing the Gambia.

On curbing the large exodus of youths to Spain and other parts of Europe, Mr. Gai said they need to be given skills, made to be productive and engaged in good ventures.

The SoS also promised to relinquish his two positions as the second Vice President of the Gambia Football Association (GFA) and the President of The Gambia Ports Authority Football club.

In January 1973 to December 1975, Mr. Gai obtained a certificate RSA in Accounting stage one and stage two.

In March and April 1985, he obtained a certificate in Auditing Professional Development at the Management Development Institute (MDI).

He studied and acquired a certificate in Public Accounts and Auditing at Croydon College in the United Kingdom between September 1989 to June 1990.

He also earned a certificate in Performance Auditing at the University of Connecticut in the United States of America between September and December 1991.

From November to December 1994, he got a diploma in Advance Auditing for Senior Auditors, ESAMI in Nairobi, Kenya.

Between January to July 1996, he obtained a diploma in the field of Professional Development in Public Financial Management at the University of Connecticut in the United States of America.

Great Lakes: Nations of Region Discuss Insecurity in East

MISNA
17 September 2007

The Foreign Ministers of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi are convened since yesterday in Kampala, capital of Uganda, to discuss security in the region and new tensions in eastern DR-Congo that threaten to have repercussions for all the surrounding countries. The meeting, organised by the United States, was attended also by the head of the United Nations Mission in DR-Congo (MONUC), William Swing, who said that the talks will focus on the creation of a mechanism able “to eliminate threats to regional security posed by negative forces” present in the eastern Congolese regions, referring to the many armed groups hiding in the forests of east DR-Congo. These groups include the Ugandan rebels of the LRA (Lord’s Resistance Army), the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) and the People’s Redemption Army (PRA), the Rwandan FDLR, the Burundian National Liberation Forces (FNL) and the militants loyal to the pro-Rwandan dissident general Laurent Nkunda, protagonists of the clashes underway for weeks in the area around Goma, capital of the North Kivu province.

At the conclusion of the works today, the ministers will release a statement announcing the signing of an accord similar to that reached last week between Kinshasa and Kampala in regard to Ugandan armed anti-government groups present in Congo, based on anticipations of the Ugandan press. In a press conference held yesterday, the MONUC head referred that 90% of peacekeepers (around 16,000) of the mission are deployed in east DR-Congo to help the Congolese army to secure the turbulent border regions.

Darfur Remains 'Volatile,' Thousands of Refugees in Jebel Marra.

MISNA
17 September 2007

There are more Sudanese refugees in the area of Jebel Marra. According to the latest news from the Red Cross (ICRC), thousands of people have left their homes in Jebel Marra to flee from renewed fighting between last June and August. The Red Cross has given aid to 9,000 people and managed to set up 2,000 medical visits. “Despite the talks to achieve peace and multiple calls for a ceasefire – said Cecilia Goin of the ICRC in Khartoum to MISNA – the situation remains volatile throughout Darfur. The fighting can take place anywhere and there is no place that may be described as secure even if some improvement may be seen here and there”.

Meanwhile, the head of the JEM movement, Khalil Ibrahim, said that an assembly of fighters, families and families of refugees to elaborate a list of requests to present in occasion of the peace talks with the government of Sudan next October 27 in Tripoli (Libya): “We want to talk about peace and other needs that shall have to be evaluated in that venue” said Ibrahim who also threatened to abandon the negotiating table should Khartoum continue to pursue its attacks. Last week JEM accused Khartoum of having hit its positions in the town of Haskanita; the spokesman for the regular army said that these were, rather, regular army troops that fell in an ambush.

Clashes Between Somaliland and Puntland.

MISNA
17 September 2007

Soldiers of the semi-autonomous region of Puntland and those of the self-proclaimed republic of Somaliland clashed in the north leaving at least two dead. Local sources said the fighting involved heavy artillery fire, which began yesterday continuing into the morning near the region of Sool, close to the village of Ari-adeye, which had witnessed fighting over border disputes before. Somaliland and Puntland have contested sovereignty on the region of Sool. Three people died and eight were wounded – including two care international workers – after clashes in southern Somalia between soldiers and militiamen in Marka, capital of the province of Lower-Shabelle. The motives are still unclear. Some sources said that armed men opened fire against the vehicle aboard which were the Care workers, wounding them, while local soldiers were dispatched responding to the gunfire such that an intense battle ensued. According to another version, the clashes took place in a coastal city, in the area of Bulo-Jan, and that they are connected to the murder, yesterday, of the former deputy police.

Koroma Wins Tense Sierra Leone Election

By Katrina Manson and Christo Johnson

FREETOWN, Sept 17 (Reuters) - Sierra Leone opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma won the West African country's presidential election after a tense run-off vote marred by some cases of fraud, the National Electoral Commission (NEC) said on Monday.

Koroma, a 53-year-old former insurance executive and candidate of the opposition All People's Congress (APC), was declared the winner with 54.6 percent of valid votes from the Sept. 8 run-off poll.

His rival, Vice-President Solomon Berewa of the ruling Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), obtained 45.4 percent.

The election was seen as a test of the former British colony's recovery from a 1991-2002 civil war, one of modern Africa's most brutal in which 50,000 people were killed and children were kidnapped, drugged and forced to fight.

The run-off vote, which followed an inconclusive first-round ballot on Aug. 11, went ahead generally peacefully, although some clashes between rival supporters marred campaigning.

The polls were the first since United Nations peacekeepers left the war-scarred country two years ago.

"Ernest Bai Koroma has been duly elected president of the Republic of Sierra Leone," NEC chairperson Christiana Thorpe told a news conference in Freetown.

Chanting "Back to Power", jubilant supporters of Koroma wearing the APC's red colours ran cheering through the streets of the capital, while cars and trucks honked their horns.

The electoral commission declared Koroma the winner despite an announcement by the SLPP at the weekend that it would seek a court injunction to prevent any more results from the presidential run-off being released.

It had said the figures declared so far, which had shown Koroma with a comfortable lead, were not credible.

Thorpe said some instances of attempted electoral fraud, including the stuffing and swapping of ballot boxes, had been discovered which had led to the invalidation of results from some polling stations. But these flaws were not sufficient to affect the final result, the NEC head added.

Voter turnout was around 68 percent.

International observers had described the polls as generally transparent and peaceful but had also reported some fraud.

Under Sierra Leone law, the official election results can be challenged by petition to the Supreme Court within seven days of their announcement by electoral authorities.

Some disgruntled SLPP supporters said they did not accept Koroma's victory.

"We will never accept the result," said a former civil war combatant outside SLPP headquarters, who gave his name as Black Jesus.

General Karake Takes up Darfur Hybrid Force Post.

The New Times
By James Munyaneza
17 September 2007

Major General Karenzi Karake has arrived in the Sudanese war-torn Darfur region to become the deputy commander of the 26,000-strong hybrid AU-UN peacekeeping force, a development that has effectively dealt a massive blow to critics of his appointment. Karake arrived at the headquarters of the yet-to-be-deployed United Nations African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) in El-Fasher in Northern Darfur on Sunday, Military Spokesman Major Jill Rutaremara confirmed yesterday.

“He has started his new assignment and is due be briefed by the Force Commander today (Sunday) in El Fasher,” Rutaremara said. The Force Commander is Nigeria’s General Martin L. Agwai.

The news comes weeks after a group of Rwandan exiles which Kigali described as “an amalgamation of extremist fugitives known for their Genocide ideology and hostility against the Government” alleged that Karake committed human rights crimes.

The allegations were made by a Brussels-based political opposition group, UDF (United Democratic Forces)–Inkingi.

Rutaremara said that while on his way to Darfur, Gen. Karake had a stopover at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he met the Chairperson of the AU Commission, Alpha Omar Konare and AU Commissioner for Peace and Security and the Union’s Director for Peace and Security, Said Djinnit.

The military publicist said Karake, 46, passed through Sudan’s Capital Khartoum where he met Sudanese government officials and other politicians.

While in Khartoum, Rutaremara added, Karenzi also met the Chief of Staff of Sudan Armed Forces and the country’s Chief of Staff for Infantry.

He said that Rwanda’s Ambassador to the UN Joseph Nsengimana sent a message on Saturday saying that the UN had approved Karake for the prestigious job.

The AU forwarded Gen. Karake’s nomination to the UN after the former endorsed him last month following his earlier nomination by Rwanda.

His transfer to Darfur coincided with the recalling of Brigadier General Ephraim Rurangwa who was deputising the commander of the African Union Mission in Sudan (Amis), which is set to be replaced by Unamid.

Karake, who was until his latest appointment the President of the Military Tribunal and Commander of the Fourth RDF Division (Southern Province), has a vast military experience and academic qualifications.

He becomes the second-in-command of a 26,000-joint-UN-AU peacekeeping force due to be deployed in Darfur later this year or latest, early next year.

The force will replace the resource-constrained and ill-equipped Amis in which Rwanda has had close to 2,000 peacekeepers over the past four years.

Karake’s deployment to Darfur will most certainly see the country recalling Brig. Gen. Ephraim Rurangwa, who has been the deputy commander of the African peacekeeping force in the troubled region.

Though Sudan finally agreed to a hybrid AU-UN mission after the Security Council watered down an earlier controversial resolution, the peacekeeping force will operate under Chapter 7 mandate as opposed to the current African peacekeepers there.

The chapter gives the would-be members of the largest UN peacekeeping force worldwide to use force when necessary in a region where about 200,000 people are believed to have died and another 2.5 million left homeless since 2003.

Karake was the UNAMIR liaison officer for the RPA in Kigali in 1990-1994.

Other senior military positions previously held by the General include Chief of Intelligence (J2), Chief of Training and Operations (J3), Commander of the Third Division and Commander of 408 Brigade.

Karake attended the Senior Commander and Staff College at the South African Army College and the National Defence College in Kenya.

The General holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Uganda’s Makerere University, Masters of Arts in International Studies from the University of Nairobi in Kenya and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of London in the UK.

RCMP Method of Finding Witnesses Questioned at Montreal War Crimes Trial

88.9 St. John News
5 September 2007

The RCMP's method of contacting witnesses for Canada's first war crimes trial was called into question Wednesday as defence lawyers continued their cross-examination of the lead investigator.

The defence team of accused war criminal Desire Munyaneza threw a series of meticulous questions at RCMP officer Guy Poudrier, hoping to raise doubts about the credibility of his investigation into the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Lawyer Richard Perras questioned Poudrier about the RCMP's recourse to genocide victim associations to help find witnesses.

"It is very difficult, Mr. Perras, to approach the Rwandan community (in Canada)," Poudrier answered during one testy exchange. "We were simply looking for witnesses."

Munyaneza was arrested in Toronto in 2005 and charged with two counts of genocide, two counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of war crimes.

He is the first person charged under Canada's 2000 war crimes law.

Perras asked the investigator about his case notes, which describe one Rwandan community contact as willing to "shake things up" for investigators.

"We hoped that if there were people around Butare at the time of the genocide that they would come forward," Poudrier explained.

Another familiar line of questioning centred around whether Poudrier divulged the names of the force's suspects during the investigation.

"Did you inform him of the names of your main suspects," Perras asked at one point, referring to an RCMP contact in Rwanda.

"I am not certain we mentioned the names," Poudrier said. "We were only looking for documentation."

The defence team also quizzed Poudrier about a photo lineup he organized with 20 Rwandan witnesses.

Perras asked him if investigators took into account the physical differences that many Rwandans claim to see between Hutus and Tutsis.

"Race, appearance and age were the main criteria for choosing the photos," he said.

With Perras referring to specific interviews, Poudrier was left often shuffling between his 15 notebooks from the investigation.

"The way you're doing this makes for a long day," Judge Andre Denis remarked as lunchtime loomed.

After a string of witnesses earlier in the trial identified Munyaneza in rapes and murders, his defence is now hoping to point out cracks in the Crown's case.

Poudrier was the only witness in a separate immigration case against a Rwandan in Canada who was accused of war crimes. The case fell apart after allegations the Crown withheld evidence from the man, known only as John Doe.

The mission to Rwanda led by Poudrier to collect the evidence was part of a fact-finding effort also linked to Munyaneza.

PM Brown Pledges UK Support For Darfur Peacekeeping Mission

Associated Press
16 September 2007

Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Sunday that Britain will probably provide technical support for the thousands of peacekeepers in Darfur, the vast, war-battered region in western Sudan.

He spoke as demonstrators prepared to march near his office in London to demand more action by governments such as Britain’s in the Darfur crisis.

In an interview with the British Broadcasting Corp., Brown said: "The tragedy in Darfur is one of the greatest humanitarian disasters of our time." He said a cease-fire is the key to moving forward in Sudan, warning that more pressure would be applied if that did not happen.

The African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission of about 20,000 troops and 6,000 police is expected to start arriving in the western region of Sudan next month. It will replace a beleaguered 7,000-strong AU force that has been unable to halt the bloodshed.

"It’s likely we will provide technical assistance, but it’s also likely ... that we will give support to those African countries that are actually contributing to the force," Brown said.

He provided no details, but Britain may provide personnel for the headquarters of the U.N.-AU force, and flights and equipment for its African soldiers and police.

Securing the U.N.’s approval for the peacekeepers was seen in Britain as a significant international achievement for Brown during his first visit to the United States as Britain’s new prime minister in July.

Next week, the U.N. General Assembly meets to further discuss the Darfur crisis.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of campaigners are expected to take to the streets in countries such as Britain, the U.S., New Zealand, South Africa and Japan to call for action in Darfur.

In London, the Global Day for Darfur demonstrators were to march from the Sudanese Embassy near St. James’s Park to Brown’s 10 Downing St. office to highlight the crisis in Darfur.

More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been uprooted since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in 2003, accusing it of decades of neglect. Sudan’s government is accused of retaliating by unleashing a militia of Arab nomads known as the janjaweed — a charge it denies.

Brown supported Sunday’s protests, saying: "I can give the assurance that we are going to keep up our efforts as a British government, working with other governments, to make sure that this combination of opportunities ... does make the difference that’s necessary."

He appealed to the international community to ensure that the stepped-up peacekeeping force is on the ground in Darfur as soon as possible.

"I want to see the hybrid force in place before the end of the year," he said. "I want to see it there, if at all possible, earlier than that."

Hopes of a cease-fire were boosted Saturday when Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir said Khartoum was ready to call a cease-fire when peace talks get under way in Libya’s capital on Oct. 27.

U..S. Says Company Bribed Officers for Work in Iraq

The New York Times
By ERIC SCHMITT and JAMES GLANZ
31 August 2007

An American-owned company operating from Kuwait paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to American contracting officers in efforts to win more than $11 million in contracts, the government says in court documents.

The Army last month suspended the company, Lee Dynamics International, from doing business with the government, and the case now appears to be at the center of a contracting fraud scandal that prompted Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to dispatch the Pentagon inspector general to Iraq to investigate.

Court documents filed in the case say the Army took action because the company was suspected of paying hundreds of thousands in bribes to Army officers to secure contracts to build, operate and maintain warehouses in Iraq that stored weapons, uniforms, vehicles and other matériel for Iraqi forces in 2004 and 2005.

A lawyer for the company denied the accusations.

One of the officers, Maj. Gloria D. Davis, a contracting official in Kuwait, shot and killed herself in Baghdad in December 2006. Government officials say the suicide occurred a day after she admitted to an Army investigator that she had accepted at least $225,000 in bribes from the company. The United States has begun proceedings to seize Major Davis’s assets, a move her heirs are contesting.

The company has been known as American Logistics Services.

Details of the case have come to light because the company contested the Army’s decision, on July 9, to suspend it from obtaining contracts. That forced the government to disclose details in court papers, including a seven-page statement by an Army investigator.

Howell Roger Riggs, a lawyer or the company, denied the accusations and said the company was appealing to have the suspension lifted. Mr. Riggs acknowledged that the company was under a Justice Department investigation but said that no charges had been filed against the company or its officials.

“This is based solely on a declaration that is unsubstantiated and uncorroborated,” Mr. Riggs said in a telephone interview. “If they want to come forward with hard evidence and accusations, we’ll deal with it at that time.”

The case is now part of a broader investigation in which the Army has a high-level team reviewing 18,000 contracts valued at more than $3 billion that the Kuwait office has awarded over four years.

The Army has suspended 22 companies and individuals, at least temporarily, from pursuing government work because of contract fraud investigations in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, an Army spokesman said Thursday. A total of 18 companies and individuals are barred for a definite period from government work. Seven more face debarment.

The court papers make clear that investigators have concluded that Lee Dynamics paid large bribes to numerous United States officials in Iraq and Kuwait. Major Davis is one official cited. Another is an Army officer, identified in the investigator’s report as “Person B,” because he is now cooperating with the investigation. He acknowledged receiving $50,000 in cash bribes from the company, the court papers said. Two people with direct knowledge of the investigation or the contracting office in Iraq at the time said “Person B” was Lt. Col. Kevin A. Davis, who worked with an officer who has emerged as a focus of the investigation in the weapons case in Iraq.

That officer, Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, was at the heart of the effort to strengthen the fledgling Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005. She worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus, who commanded the effort at the time. The general is now the top commander in Iraq. There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus.

In a brief phone conversation Thursday, Colonel Selph confirmed the connection between her and Colonel Davis in Iraq. “I worked for Kevin Davis,” Colonel Selph said. She said she wanted to consult her lawyer before speaking further and did not respond to subsequent messages.

A woman identifying herself as Kevin Davis’s wife said on the phone that he was out of town and not available for comment. She said that he had gone to work for Lee Dynamics after retiringfrom the army. It is not believed he is related to Gloria Davis.

As the case expands, investigators are looking at the possibility that it has connections to what had appeared to be a separate major corruption scandal. Last week, Maj. John Cockerham, a former Army contracting officer in Kuwait, and his wife and his sister were indicted on charges that they accepted up to $9.6 million in bribes for defense contracts in Iraq and Kuwait.

Court documents, say Major Davis also served as a contracting officer at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, from in 2003 and 2004 and awarded millions of dollars in contracts to American Logistics and its affiliate companies, raising the question of whether the cases are related.

Lee Dynamics appears to be emblematic of scores of companies formed since the Iraqi government fell to take advantage of billions of dollars in contracts to clothe, feed and arm American troops in Kuwait and to sustain Iraq security forces in Iraq.

According to a July 9 statement by Larry S. Moreland, an agent with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command, the company’s founder, George H. Lee, and an unnamed person formed American Logistics Services, a Kuwait-based company, to provide logistical support to the military.

In 2004, the company was awarded $11.7 million in contracts to build, operate and maintain several warehouses in Iraq. The court papers contend that as a result of bribes, the company illegally received advance information about the contracts.

In May 2005, the document said, Mr. Lee and his son, Justin W. Lee, shifted assets and contracts to Lee Dynamics, and its contract to maintain the warehouses was renewed in July 2005 even though its performance had been abysmal, said two American officials who were in the country at the time.

That month, after Major Davis moved to the Pentagon, Lee Dynamics was awarded a $12 million warehousing contract. Before the award, Major Davis told George Lee that his company would receive a “glowing report” during the bidding, court documents in the government’s case to seize Major Davis’s assets say.

Between August 2005 and April 2006, the company transferred more than $220,900 in three separate deposits to bank accounts controlled by Major Davis, according to the court filings.

According to its Web site, Lee Dynamics’ warehouses in Taji, Umm Qasr, Ramadi, Mosul and Tikrit, all in Iraq, “have received, stored and issued a large part of the more than a billion dollars worth of materials and equipment that has been ordered for the reconstruction of Iraq.”

I. Coast Elections in 2008

News 24
15 September 2007

Long-awaited presidential elections will be held at the "very latest" by October 2008, the head of the country's independent electoral commission said on Thursday.

Beugre Mambe told reporters the vote could only be held 10 months after the completion of a national identity registration program that is due to start on September 25 and is expected to last three months.

President Laurent Gbagbo's five-year mandate officially expired in October 2005, but he has stayed in power since then, citing a constitutional clause that allows the head of state to extend his term in office if war or crisis necessitates it.

Ivory Coast, the world's leading cocoa producer, had been split in two since a 2002 war began. In March, Gbagbo signed a peace agreement with rebel chief Guillaume Soro, who became prime minister a month later as a part of the power-sharing deal.

The poll was first delayed for a year in 2005, and then again in 2006 because Gbagbo loyalists and rebels who controlled the north could not agree on key issues, including disarmament and a national program meant to help register legitimate voters lacking proper identity documents.

The peace deal paved the way for reunification of the country's north and south. A UN buffer zone that once separated the two sides has been dismantled, but army troops still do not venture in to the north, were armed rebels still control territory.

In August, Gbagbo said he hoped elections could take place by the end of the year. The Burkina Faso agreement called for the vote to be held within 10 months.

MPRI to Start New Military Training Program With Uganda.

Editor's Note: US Private Military Company MPRI will be training UDPF for their coming offensive against the LRA, ADF, and NALU in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This follows Secretary Frazier's overt threats to the LRA to accept the peace process or be wiped out.(http://www.nationmedia.com/EastAfrican/current/News/News091007.htm)


https://app.mpri.com/IIF/jobs/JobDetail2540.html

Billions Over Baghdad

Vanity Fair
By Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
October 07 Issue
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/10/iraq_billions200710?printable=true¤tPage=all

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam's palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled.

Hidden in plain sight, 10 miles west of Manhattan, amid a suburban community of middle-class homes and small businesses, stands a fortress-like building shielded by big trees and lush plantings behind an iron fence. The steel-gray structure, in East Rutherford, New Jersey, is all but invisible to the thousands of commuters who whiz by every day on Route 17. Even if they noticed it, they would scarcely guess that it is the largest repository of American currency in the world.

Officially, 100 Orchard Street is referred to by the acronym eroc, for the East Rutherford Operations Center of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The brains of the New York Fed may lie in Manhattan, but xeroc is the beating heart of its operations—a secretive, heavily guarded compound where the bank processes checks, makes wire transfers, and receives and ships out its most precious commodity: new and used paper money.

On Tuesday, June 22, 2004, a tractor-trailer truck turned off Route 17 onto Orchard Street, stopped at a guard station for clearance, and then entered the eroc compound. What happened next would have been the stuff of routine—procedures followed countless times. Inside an immense three-story cavern known as the currency vault, the truck's next cargo was made ready for shipment. With storage space to rival a Wal-Mart's, the currency vault can reportedly hold upwards of $60 billion in cash. Human beings don't perform many functions inside the vault, and few are allowed in; a robotic system, immune to human temptation, handles everything. On that Tuesday in June the machines were especially busy. Though accustomed to receiving and shipping large quantities of cash, the vault had never before processed a single order of this magnitude: $2.4 billion in $100 bills.

Under the watchful eye of bank employees in a glass-enclosed control room, and under the even steadier gaze of a video surveillance system, pallets of shrink-wrapped bills were lifted out of currency bays by unmanned "storage and retrieval vehicles" and loaded onto conveyors that transported the 24 million bills, sorted into "bricks," to the waiting trailer. No human being would have touched this cargo, which is how the Fed wants it: the bank aims to "minimize the handling of currency by eroc employees and create an audit trail of all currency movement from initial receipt through final disposition."

Forty pallets of cash, weighing 30 tons, were loaded that day. The tractor-trailer turned back onto Route 17 and after three miles merged onto a southbound lane of the New Jersey Turnpike, looking like any other big rig on a busy highway. Hours later the truck arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, D.C. There the seals on the truck were broken, and the cash was off-loaded and counted by Treasury Department personnel. The money was transferred to a C-130 transport plane. The next day, it arrived in Baghdad.

That transfer of cash to Iraq was the largest one-day shipment of currency in the history of the New York Fed. It was not, however, the first such shipment of cash to Iraq. Beginning soon after the invasion and continuing for more than a year, $12 billion in U.S. currency was airlifted to Baghdad, ostensibly as a stopgap measure to help run the Iraqi government and pay for basic services until a new Iraqi currency could be put into people's hands. In effect, the entire nation of Iraq needed walking-around money, and Washington mobilized to provide it.

What Washington did not do was mobilize to keep track of it. By all accounts, the New York Fed and the Treasury Department exercised strict surveillance and control over all of this money while it was on American soil. But after the money was delivered to Iraq, oversight and control evaporated. Of the $12 billion in U.S. banknotes delivered to Iraq in 2003 and 2004, at least $9 billion cannot be accounted for. A portion of that money may have been spent wisely and honestly; much of it probably wasn't. Some of it was stolen.

Once the money arrived in Iraq it entered a free-for-all environment where virtually anyone with fingers could take some of it. Moreover, the company that was hired to keep tabs on the outflow of money existed mainly on paper. Based in a private home in San Diego, it was a shell corporation with no certified public accountants. Its address of record is a post-office box in the Bahamas, where it is legally incorporated. That post-office box has been associated with shadowy offshore activities.

Coalition of the Billing
The first shipment of cash to Iraq took place on April 11, 2003—it consisted of $20 million in $1, $5, and $10 bills. It was arranged in small bills on the theory that these could quickly be circulated into the Iraqi economy "to prevent a monetary and financial collapse," as one former Treasury official put it. Those were the days when American officials worried that the gravest threat facing Iraq might be low-grade civilian unrest in Baghdad. They didn't have a clue as to the power of the insurgency that was to come. The initial $20 million came exclusively from Iraqi assets that had been frozen in U.S. banks as long ago as the Gulf War, in 1990. Subsequent airlifts of cash also included billions from Iraqi oil revenues controlled by the United Nations. After the creation of the Development Fund for Iraq (D.F.I.)—a kind of holding pit of money to be spent for "purposes benefitting the people of Iraq"—the U.N. turned over control of Iraq's oil billions to the United States.

When the U.S. military delivered the cash to Baghdad, the money passed into the hands of an entirely new set of players—the staff of the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority. To many Americans, the initials C.P.A. would soon be as familiar as those of long-established government agencies such as D.O.D. or hud. But the C.P.A. was anything but a conventional agency. And, as events would show, its initials would have nothing in common with "certified public accountant." The C.P.A. had been hastily created to serve as the interim government of Iraq, but its legality and paternity were murky from the start. The Authority was in effect established by edict outside the traditional framework of American government. Not subject to the usual restrictions and oversight of most agencies, the C.P.A. during the 14 months of its existence would become a sump for American and Iraqi money as it disappeared into the hands of Iraqi ministries and American contractors. The Coalition of the Willing, as one commentator observed, had turned into the Coalition of the Billing.

The first mention of the C.P.A. came on April 16, 2003, in a so-called freedom message to the Iraqi people by General Tommy R. Franks, commander of the coalition forces. A week after mobs ransacked Iraq's National Museum of its treasures, unchallenged by American troops, General Franks arrived in Baghdad for a six-hour whirlwind tour. He met with his commanders in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces, held a video conference with President Bush, and then quickly flew off. "Our stay in Iraq will be temporary," General Franks wrote, "no longer than it takes to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and to establish stability and help Iraqis form a functioning government that respects the rule of law." With that in mind, General Franks wrote that he created the Coalition Provisional Authority "to exercise powers of government temporarily, and as necessary, especially to provide security, to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid and to eliminate weapons of mass destruction." Three weeks later, on May 8, 2003, the U.S. and British ambassadors to the United Nations sent a letter to the U.N. Security Council, effectively delivering the C.P.A. to the United Nations as a fait accompli.

The day before, President Bush had appointed L. Paul Bremer III, a retired diplomat, as presidential envoy to Iraq and the president's "personal representative," with the understanding that he would become the C.P.A. administrator. Bremer had held State Department posts in Afghanistan, Norway, and the Netherlands; had served as an assistant to Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig; and had closed out his diplomatic career in 1989 as ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism. More recently, he had been the chairman and chief executive officer of a crisis-management business called Marsh Crisis Consulting. Despite his State Department background, Bremer had been selected by the Pentagon, which had elbowed aside all contenders for authority in post-invasion Iraq. The C.P.A. itself was a creature of the Pentagon, and it would be Pentagon personnel who did the C.P.A.'s hiring.

Over the next year, a compliant Congress gave $1.6 billion to Bremer to administer the C.P.A. This was over and above the $12 billion in cash that the C.P.A. had been given to disburse from Iraqi oil revenues and unfrozen Iraqi funds. Few in Congress actually had any idea about the true nature of the C.P.A. as an institution. Lawmakers had never discussed the establishment of the C.P.A., much less authorized it—odd, given that the agency would be receiving taxpayer dollars. Confused members of Congress believed that the C.P.A. was a U.S. government agency, which it was not, or that at the very least it had been authorized by the United Nations, which it had not. One congressional funding measure makes reference to the C.P.A. as "an entity of the United States Government"—highly inaccurate. The same congressional measure states that the C.P.A. was "established pursuant to United Nations Security Council resolutions"—just as inaccurate. The bizarre truth, as a U.S. District Court judge would point out in an opinion, is that "no formal document … plainly establishes the C.P.A. or provides for its formation."

Accountable really to no one, its finances "off the books" for U.S. government purposes, the C.P.A. provided an unprecedented opportunity for fraud, waste, and corruption involving American government officials, American contractors, renegade Iraqis, and many others. In its short life more than $23 billion would pass through its hands. And that didn't include potentially billions more in oil shipments the C.P.A. neglected to meter. At stake was an ocean of cash that would evaporate whenever the C.P.A. did. All parties understood that there was a sell-by date, and that it was everyone for himself. An Iraqi hospital administrator told The Guardian of England that, when he arrived to sign a contract, the army officer representing the C.P.A. had crossed out the original price and doubled it. "The American officer explained that the increase (more than $1 million) was his retirement package." Alan Grayson, a Washington, D.C., lawyer for whistle-blowers who have worked for American contractors in Iraq, says simply that during that first year under the C.P.A. the country was turned into "a free-fraud zone."

Bremer has expressed general satisfaction with the C.P.A.'s work while at the same time acknowledging that mistakes were made. "I believe the C.P.A. discharged its responsibilities to manage these Iraqi funds on behalf of the Iraqi people," he told a congressional committee. "With the benefit of hindsight, I would have made some decisions differently. But on the whole, I think we made great progress under some of the most difficult conditions imaginable, including putting Iraq on the path to democracy."

To be fair, the C.P.A. really did need money desperately, and it really did need to start spreading it among the traumatized Iraqi population. It also needed to jump-start Iraq's basic services. As the C.P.A. demanded ever greater amounts of cash, the pallets of $1, $5, and $10 bills were soon replaced by bundles of $100 bills. During the C.P.A.'s little more than a year of life, the New York Federal Reserve Bank made 21 shipments of currency to Iraq totaling $11,981,531,000. All told, the Fed would ship 281 million individual banknotes, in bricks weighing a total of 363 tons.

After arriving in Baghdad, some of the cash was shipped to outlying regions, but most of it stayed in the capital, where it was delivered to Iraqi banks, to installations such as Camp Victory, the mammoth U.S. Army facility adjacent to the Baghdad airport, and to Saddam's former presidential palace, in the Green Zone, which had become the home of Bremer's C.P.A. and the makeshift Iraqi government. At the palace the cash disappeared into a vault in the basement. Few people ever saw the vault, but the word was that during one short period it held as much as $3 billion. Whatever the figure, it was a major repository of the banknotes from America during the brief time the cash was under the care of the C.P.A. The money flowed in and out rapidly. When someone needed cash, a unit called the Program Review Board, composed of senior C.P.A. officials, reviewed the request and decided whether to recommend a disbursement. A military officer would then present that authorization to personnel at the vault.

Even those who picked up large sums usually did not actually see the vault. Once a disbursement had been made, the cash was brought to an adjoining room for pickup. This "secure room," as one military officer called it, looked a lot like a vault itself: a thick metal door at the entrance, with the room beyond starkly furnished with only a table and chairs. The table would be piled high with cash. An authorized officer would sign papers for the money, then begin carting it upstairs—sometimes in sacks or metal boxes—to the Iraqi ministry or C.P.A. office that had requested it. Upon turning over the cash, the officer would be required to obtain a receipt—nothing more.

C.P.A. officials tried to keep a rough running tab on the amount disbursed to individual Iraqi agencies such as the Ministry of Finance ($7.7 billion). But there was little detail, nothing specific, on how the money was actually used. The system basically operated on "trust and faith," as one former C.P.A. official put it. Once the cash passed into the hands of the Iraqis or any other party, no one knew where it went. The C.P.A. turned over $1.5 billion in cash to Iraqi banks, for instance, but later auditors could account for less than $500 million. The United Nations retained a team of auditors to look over American shoulders. They didn't see much, because they were largely cut off from access while the C.P.A. held power. As a report by the U.N.'s accounting consultant, KPMG, noted dryly, "We encountered difficulties in performing our duties and meeting with key C.P.A. personnel."

"There was corruption everywhere," said one former military officer who worked with the C.P.A. in Baghdad in the months after the invasion. Some of the Iraqis who were put in charge of ministries after Saddam's fall had never run a government agency before. Their inexperience aside, he said, they lived in constant fear of losing their jobs or their lives. All many cared about, he added, was taking care of themselves. "You could see that a lot of them were trying their best to get a quick retirement fund before they were ousted or killed," he added. "You just get what you can while you're in that position of power. Instead of trying to build the nation, you build yourself."

Did any withdrawals from the vault pay for secret activities by government personnel? It is an obvious possibility. Much of the cash was clearly destined for American contractors or Iraqi subcontractors. Sometimes the Iraqis came to the palace to collect their cash; other times, when they were reluctant to show up at the American compound, U.S. military personnel had to deliver it themselves. One of the riskier jobs for some U.S. military men was to fill up a car with bags of cash and drive the money to contractors in Baghdad neighborhoods, handing it over like a postal worker delivering mail.

‘Fraud" was simply another word for "business as usual." Of 8,206 "guards" drawing paychecks courtesy of the C.P.A., only 602 warm bodies could in fact be found; the other 7,604 were ghost employees. Halliburton, the government contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, charged the C.P.A. for 42,000 daily meals for soldiers while in fact serving only 14,000 of them. Cash was handed out from the backs of pickup trucks. On one occasion a C.P.A. official received $6.75 million in cash with the expectation he would shell it out in one week. Another time, the C.P.A. decided to spend $500 million on "security." No specifics, just a half-billion dollars for security, with this cryptic explanation: "Composition TBD"—that is, "to be determined."

The pervasiveness of this Why-should-I-care? attitude was driven home in an exchange with retired admiral David Oliver, the C.P.A.'s director of management and budget. Oliver was asked by a BBC reporter what had happened to all the cash airlifted to Baghdad:

Oliver: "I have no idea—I can't tell you whether or not the money went to the right things or didn't—nor do I actually think it's important."

Q: "Not important?"

Oliver: "No. The coalition—and I think it was between 300 and 600 people, civilians—and you want to bring in 3,000 auditors to make sure money's being spent?"

Q: "Yes, but the fact is that billions of dollars have disappeared without a trace."

Oliver: "Of their money. Billions of dollars of their money, yeah, I understand. I'm saying what difference does it make?"

The difference it made was that some American contractors correctly believed they could walk off with as much money as they could carry. The circumstances that surround the handling of comparatively small sums help explain the billions that ultimately vanished. In the south-central region of Iraq a contracting officer stored $2 million in a safe in his bathroom. One agent kept $678,000 in an unsecured footlocker. Another agent turned over some $23 million to his team of "paying agents" to deliver to contractors, but documentation could be found for only $6.3 million of it. One project officer received $350,000 to fund human-rights projects, but in the end could account for less than $200,000 of it. Two C.P.A. agents left Iraq without accounting for two payments of $715,000 and $777,000. The money has never been found.

To Frank Willis, a senior adviser to the Iraqi transportation ministry, the presence of so much cash circulating so freely gave the Green Zone a "Wild West" feel. A moderate Republican who worked for Reagan and voted for George W. Bush, Willis spent many years in executive roles in the State Department and the Department of Transportation before leaving government service in 1985. He was a top executive of a health institute in Oklahoma when, in 2003, an old friend from Washington called and asked if he would come to Iraq to help the C.P.A. get the various transportation systems running again.

"You've got to be crazy," Willis told him at first. He says he was talked into going for 30 days, but once in Baghdad became caught up in the work and stayed for six grueling months. Willis says he wasn't there a month before he felt the way things were being done was "terribly wrong." One afternoon he returned to his office to find piles and piles of shrink-wrapped $100 bills stacked on a table. "This just got wheelbarrowed in," one of his American colleagues explained. "What do you think of two million bucks?" The money had been "checked out" of Saddam's old vault in the basement, two floors below, in order to pay a U.S. contractor hired by the C.P.A. to provide security.

The neat bundles of cash looked almost like play money, and the temptation to handle them was irresistible. "We were all in the room passing those things around and having fun," Willis remembers. He and his colleagues played a game of football, tossing the bricks back and forth. "You could spin them but not throw a spiral," Willis says with a laugh. When he called the American contractor to come get his money, Willis advised him, "You better bring a gunnysack."

"Integrity Is a Core Principle"
The American contractor needing the gunnysack was a company called Custer Battles. The name was derived not from Little Big Horn but from the names of the company's owners, Scott K. Custer and Michael J. Battles. Both were former army rangers in their mid-30s, and Battles also had once been a C.I.A. operative. The pair showed up on the streets of Baghdad with the blessing of the White House at invasion's end, looking for a way to do business. At the time, the only American civilians who could gain access to the city were those approved by President Bush's staff.

The Battles half of the team brought the White House access, secured when Michael Battles became the G.O.P.-backed candidate in the 2002 Rhode Island congressional primary for the privilege of losing to the Democratic incumbent, Patrick Kennedy. Battles not only lost the primary but was fined by the Federal Election Commission for misrepresenting campaign contributions. Nevertheless, he forged important political connections. His contributors included Haley Barbour, the longtime Washington power broker and former chairman of the Republican National Committee, who is now governor of Mississippi, and Frederic V. Malek, a former special assistant to President Nixon, who survived the Watergate scandal and went on to become an insider in the Reagan administration and both Bush administrations.

The C.P.A. awarded Custer and Battles one of its first no-bid contracts—$16.5 million to protect civilian aircraft flights, of which at the time there were few, into Baghdad International Airport. The company faced immediate obstacles: Custer and Battles didn't have any money, they didn't have a viable business, and they didn't have any employees. Bremer's C.P.A. had overlooked these shortcomings and forked over $2 million anyway, in cash, to get them started, simply ignoring long-standing requirements that the government certify that a contractor has the capacity to fulfill a contract. That first $2 million cash infusion was followed shortly by a second. Over the next year Custer Battles would secure more than $100 million in Iraq contracts. The company even set up an internal Office of Corporate Integrity. "Integrity is a core principle of Custer Battles' corporate values," Scott Custer stated in a press release.

The U.S. business community was impressed by this upstart. In May 2004, Ernst & Young, the global accounting firm, announced the finalists for its New England Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, honoring an ability "to innovate, develop, and cultivate groundbreaking business models, products, and services." Among the honorees were Scott Custer and Michael Battles.

Four months later, in September 2004, the air force issued an order barring Custer Battles from receiving any new government contracts until 2009. The company had come to epitomize the way business was done in Baghdad. Custer Battles had billed the government $400,000 for electricity that cost $74,000. It had billed $432,000 for a food order that cost $33,000. It had charged the C.P.A. for leased equipment that was stolen, and had submitted forged invoices for reimbursement—all the while moving millions of dollars into offshore bank accounts. In one instance, the company claimed ownership of forklifts used to transport the C.P.A.'s cash (among other things) around the Baghdad airport. But up until the war the forklifts had been the property of Iraqi Airways. They were "liberated," along with the Iraqi people, following hostilities. Custer Battles seized them, painted over the old name, and transferred ownership to its offshore businesses. The forklifts were then leased back to Custer Battles for thousands of dollars a month, a cost that Custer Battles passed along to the C.P.A. In 2006, a federal-court jury in Virginia ordered the company to pay $10 million in damages and penalties for defrauding the government. The jury found more than three dozen instances of fraud in which Custer Battles used shell companies in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere to manufacture phony invoices and pad its bills. During the same period Battles personally withdrew $3 million from the company coffers as a kind of bonus—or, as he put it, "a draw." The jury decision in the whistle-blower lawsuit was subsequently overturned when the trial judge set the verdict aside, pointing out that the C.P.A. was not in fact a U.S.-government entity and hence Custer Battles could not be tried under the federal fraud act. That decision is under appeal.

The NorthStar Contract

How can billions of dollars simply vanish? Wasn't there any accounting mechanism in place to keep track of the money?

La Jolla, California, is about as far away from Iraq in both distance and mind-set as one can get. The house at 5468 Soledad Road is a two-story dwelling with six bedrooms and five and a half baths, a typical California home of beige stucco under a red tiled roof. The neighborhood is lush and well kept. But in one respect 5468 Soledad is not a typical suburban house at all.

On October 25, 2003, the C.P.A. awarded a $1.4 million contract "to provide accountant and audit services" to help "in the management and accounting of the Development Fund for Iraq." In other words, the purpose was to help Bremer and the C.P.A. keep tabs on the billions of dollars under their control, and to help make sure that the money was properly spent. The one-year C.P.A. contract was awarded to a company called NorthStar Consultants.

When a request was made to the U.S. government for a copy of this contract, officials at the Pentagon, which has oversight, dragged their feet for weeks. The document they eventually supplied had been strategically redacted. Nearly all the information about the contractor had been blacked out, including the name and title of the company officer who had executed the contract, the name of the person to call for information about the company, the last four digits of the company's phone number, and the name of the U.S.-government official who had awarded the contract in the first place. But by cross-referencing public records and other sources it was possible to fill in some of the missing data. One path led to 5468 Soledad Road.

The house is owned by Thomas A. and Konsuelo Howell, according to San Diego County records. The couple apparently bought it new in 1999. State records indicate that several companies operate from the house. One of them is called International Financial Consulting, Inc., though it isn't clear what this company actually does. Incorporated in 1998, I.F.C. was described as a venture in "business consulting," according to papers Howell filed with the state. The Howells are listed as the only directors.

Another company operating out of 5468 Soledad is called Kota Industries, Inc., whose stated business is the "sale of furniture, home furnishings, flooring," according to California records. Numerous business directories in the San Diego area ascribe similar activities to Kota, listing it as a remodeling, repairing, or restoration contractor. One directory describes its specialty as "kitchen, bathroom, basement remodeling." Again, the Howells are the only officers and directors.

In January 2004, in the business-names index of San Diego County, Thomas Howell indicated that a third company was now based at 5468 Soledad, noting that it was owned by International Financial Consulting. This new company was NorthStar.

How did someone whose line of work includes home remodeling end up getting the contract to audit the billions being airlifted to Iraq? Thomas Howell is 60; he and his wife have lived in San Diego for at least two decades. Over the years, the couple has also maintained addresses in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Laredo, Texas. Neighbors describe the Howells as pleasant, but can add little else. "I know them, but I don't know what they do," said one. "That's all I can tell you." Two others could say only that they saw the Howells occasionally in the neighborhood. Were they aware that a company with an Iraqi contract had operated from the house? "Really?" said one. "No. I didn't know that."

Thomas Howell refuses to discuss the NorthStar contract in detail. A telephone exchange with him, reached at 5468 Soledad Road, went as follows.

A woman answered, "Kota Industries."

"Could I speak with Mr. Thomas Howell?"

"May I ask who is calling?" the woman asked.

"My name is Jim Steele."

"Wait just a second," the woman said.

A few moments later, a man came on the line. "Tom Howell," he said.

"My name is Jim Steele, and I am a writer with the magazine Vanity Fair. I would like to talk to you about NorthStar Consultants."

Howell said, "Well, let me find a contact who can talk all this stuff with you. What is your phone number, Jim?"

Howell repeated the number and added, "O.K. Let me get somebody who can discuss all this stuff for you."

"I'd just like to make sure here. Aren't you president of the company?"

"That's right," said Howell.

"But you can't … "

"Well, I'm not … I can't … You want to talk about the D.F.I. [Development Fund for Iraq] and that sort of stuff?" asked Howell.

"Well, yeah."

"O.K.," Howell replied, "I'll get someone who's authorized to talk about all that. I'll have them give you a call or I'll call you and give you their number."

"Is this the military or your lawyer?"

"The military," said Howell, abruptly ending the conversation with "O.K. Thanks. Good-bye."

The next attempt was a visit to Howell's home the following day. A stylishly dressed woman emerged from behind a locked fence. "May I help you?" she asked. The woman confirmed that she was Konsuelo Howell, and explained that it would be impossible to speak with her husband. "He is out of the country."

He never did call back with the name of a Pentagon official "authorized" to speak about NorthStar. Nor did anyone from the Pentagon call. When a Pentagon public-affairs officer was queried about who might be able to discuss the contract, the officer said she needed a name, which, as it turned out, only Howell could provide. The Pentagon also failed to respond to a request for the information deleted from the NorthStar contract and the name of the person who had ordered it deleted.

When Howell was contacted again, three months later, he stated that the Department of Defense had told him that "they didn't have anybody anymore specifically tasked with answering these questions." As far as D.O.D. was concerned, Howell added, the issue was "closed." Once again he refused to discuss the NorthStar contract in any detail: "The way I normally work with all my clients is: my work is confidential," he said. "If they want to let it out, that's fine. But I work for them. It's their business." Howell did say that NorthStar was his one and only U.S. government contract. How did he land it? "I saw it published on the Web, that it was out for bids," he said.

As for how much auditing NorthStar really did in Iraq, the missing billions provide the best answer. The company did have personnel in Baghdad, though how many, and for how long, and for what purpose, is not known—another point Howell declines to discuss. Under the terms of C.P.A. Regulation No. 2, signed by Bremer on June 15, 2003, money coming into Iraq was supposed to be tracked by an "independent certified public accounting firm." Howell was not a certified public accountant, nor were any of the people who worked for him. Bremer seems to have been unaware of this detail. When he was asked at a congressional hearing earlier this year about NorthStar, he answered, "I don't know what kind of firm it was, other than it was an accounting firm." Would it upset him, a congressman asked, if he found out there were no accountants on NorthStar's staff? "It would," Bremer answered, "if it were true."

It is true. And rather than reissue the contract to a certified public accountant, someone in the government contract office simply eliminated the requirement, thereby making Howell eligible for the work.

The Baghdad-Bahamas Connection
When an unknown official at the Pentagon meticulously went through the NorthStar contract and used a thick-tipped marker to black out Thomas Howell's name, title, office address, and phone number, he or she neglected to conceal one of the most intriguing aspects of the contract: NorthStar's mailing address. It was P.O. Box N-3813 in Nassau, in the Bahamas.

High on a hill in Nassau, the main post office commands panoramic views of the capital city—the pink stuccoed Parliament building, bustling Bay Street with its hordes of tourists, and, beyond it, the giant cruise ships that dock in Nassau's harbor. Just as you enter the post office, on a sprawling plaza beneath an overhang offering protection from the tropical sun and rain, there stand row after row of metal boxes, each bearing the capital letter N followed by a series of numbers. These are the private post-office boxes of Nassau. Because there is no home delivery in the city, it is the way people in the capital get their mail.

Box N-3813, four inches wide by five inches high, looks like all the other post-office boxes. It harbors many secrets that its users want to keep. No one knows whether anyone at the C.P.A. or the Pentagon questioned why one of its contractors used an offshore post-office box. It is undeniably true, however, that foreigners often use post-office boxes in the Bahamas and other tax havens for three purposes: to conceal assets, to avoid taxes, and to launder money. NorthStar would not be at all unusual among Iraq contractors in setting up its affairs this way. Post-office boxes in tax havens around the world have been flooded with contractor business based in Iraq.

Box N-3813, it turns out, has been the locus for all sorts of transactions by Americans and others looking to move money offshore. In addition to Howell's NorthStar, this particular box also served as the address of record for a man named Patrick Thomson and for his Bahamian business called Lions Gate Management. Both figured prominently in one of the more spectacular offshore frauds in recent years, the collapse of Evergreen Security. The Caribbean-based Evergreen enticed thousands of investors, many of them U.S. retirees, to pour money into its so-called tax-sheltered offshore funds, with the promise of handsome returns. Some of the money came from hundreds of Caribbean trusts for which Thomson acted as trustee. A Ponzi scheme masquerading as a mutual fund, Evergreen siphoned $200 million from investors in the United States and two dozen other countries. One of its ringleaders was William J. Zylka, a New Jersey "con artist who falsified his background, credentials and wealth in order to perpetrate elaborate schemes," according to court documents. He pocketed $27.7 million of Evergreen's money.

Throughout the looting of Evergreen, Thomson was one of the firm's three directors. During that time he also arranged for Howell to establish the same Nassau post-office box as NorthStar's legal home. Identified in Nassau as a member of one of Scotland's oldest publishing families, Thomson has operated out of one or more office buildings in the heart of Nassau for many years. Like most of those in the shadowy world of offshore deals, he has generally kept a low profile, the scandal over Evergreen Security being the one great exception. Thomson incorporated NorthStar for Howell in the Bahamas in January of 1998, as what is known as an "international business company," or I.B.C. Despite their impressive name, I.B.C.'s are little more than paper operations. As a rule, they don't carry on any business; they are empty vessels that can be used for anything. They have no real chief executive officer or board of directors, and they don't publish financial statements. An I.B.C.'s books, if there are any, can be kept anywhere in the world, but no one can inspect them. I.B.C.'s aren't required to file annual reports or disclose the identity of their owners. They're shells, operating in total secrecy. In the last two decades, they have sprouted by the hundreds of thousands in tax havens worldwide.

In a telephone interview, Thomson discussed with great reluctance his role in creating NorthStar for Thomas Howell. How did they meet?

"I believe I was introduced to him through a friend with Citibank," Thomson replied. "I believe Howell used to work for Citibank." He said it was his recollection that Howell initially established NorthStar because of some consulting work he was doing in the Far East, not the Middle East. "This was before the Iraq war started," he noted. "All we did was supply a company name." Thomson said he had had no contact with Howell in years. He had heard that Howell was in Iraq, but declined to discuss the matter further.

Turning Off the Spigot
By the spring of 2004 the clock was winding down for L. Paul Bremer and the C.P.A. Within several months—on June 30—the Authority was scheduled to turn government operations over to the Iraqis, at least formally. There was palpable anxiety among officials and contractors about what would happen under the new Iraqi regime, and they launched an aggressive effort to get as much money into the pipeline as possible. On April 26, another shipment of cash-laden pallets, this one holding $750 million, arrived at Baghdad International Airport. On May 18 the Fed made a $1 billion shipment, which was followed on June 22 by the biggest single shipment ever made by the Fed anywhere—$2.4 billion. Another $1.6 billion arrived three days later, bringing the total of cash shipments to Iraq to $5 billion in the C.P.A.'s final three months.

The C.P.A. sought to make one more huge withdrawal. On Monday, June 28, as Bremer stole away from Baghdad unannounced—two days ahead of the scheduled handover of authority—another C.P.A. official put in hurried pleas to the Federal Reserve Bank for an additional $1 billion infusion, hoping to get the money before an Iraqi provisional government came to power. Internal e-mails from the Federal Reserve Bank show that the requests for money came from Don Davis, an air-force colonel serving as the C.P.A. comptroller and manager of the Development Fund for Iraq. But the Fed would have no part of the plan. Because Bremer had already "transferred authority (which is being reported in the press as 10:26 a.m. in Baghdad)," a Fed official explained, "the C.P.A. no longer had control over Iraq's assets."

In one of his last official acts before leaving Baghdad, Bremer issued an order—prepared by the Pentagon, he says—declaring that all coalition-force members "shall be immune from any form of arrest or detention other than by persons acting on behalf of their Sending States." Contractors also got the same get-out-of-jail-free card. According to Bremer's order, "contractors shall be immune from Iraqi legal process with respect to acts performed by them pursuant to the terms and conditions of a Contract or any sub-contract thereto." The Iraqi people, who had had no say over Saddam Hussein's illegal conduct during his dictatorship, would have no say over illegal conduct by Americans in their new democracy.

And the "Sending State" itself is not interested in pursuing misconduct. With the exception of a few low-level individuals, the Bush administration's Justice Department has resolutely avoided the prosecution of corporate fraud stemming from the occupation of Iraq.

"In our fifth year in the war in Iraq," according to Alan Grayson, the attorney for whistle-blowers, "the Bush administration has not litigated a single case against any war profiteer under the False Claims Act." This at a time, Grayson told a congressional committee, when "billions of dollars are missing and many billions more wasted." Grayson knows what he is talking about. He represented the whistle-blowers in the Custer Battles case brought under the False Claims Act—a case in which the Justice Department refused to get involved, and the only one that has gone to trial.

There is no true method of calculating the human cost of the war in Iraq. The monetary cost, grossly inflated by theft and corruption, is another matter. One simple piece of data puts this into perspective: to date, America has spent twice as much in inflation-adjusted dollars to rebuild Iraq as it did to rebuild Japan—an industrialized country three times Iraq's size, two of whose cities had been incinerated by atomic bombs. Understanding how and why this happened will take many years—if understanding comes at all. There has been no rush to explain even this one small part of the story, that of the missing Iraqi billions. No one in the U.S. government wants to talk about NorthStar Consultants, much less about the money that disappeared. Bradford R. Higgins was the C.P.A.'s chief financial officer, on loan from the State Department, where he is assistant secretary for resource management and chief financial officer. Higgins says it was "a Department of Defense–managed operation"; he says that "I don't know anyone at NorthStar" and that he did not oversee its operations. The C.P.A.'s comptroller and D.F.I. fund manager during the NorthStar days in 2003 was air-force colonel Don Davis. Through the air-force public-affairs office in the Pentagon, Davis declined to comment. L. Paul Bremer III, who wrote a 400-page book on his experiences as the C.P.A.'s administrator, stated in an interview that he had no input in the decision to hire NorthStar. He explained that "all of the contracting was done, by order of the secretary of defense, by the department of the army. They were our contracting arm … I don't think I ever heard of NorthStar until some questions came up after I left." Nor did he have any dealings with NorthStar's Howell, he said. "If I met him, I have no memory of it." Queries sent repeatedly to the army's public-affairs desk in Baghdad and the Pentagon have gone unanswered, as have those to the office of the secretary of defense.

The simple truth about the missing money is the same one that applies to so much else about the American occupation of Iraq. The U.S. government never did care about accounting for those Iraqi billions and it doesn't care now. It cares only about ensuring that an accounting does not occur.

Alan Greenspan Claims Iraq War Really Was For Oil

Sunday Times
Graham Peterson
16 September 2007

Editor's Note: Funny, when NBC's Lester Holt covered the book on last nights' news, he convienently forgot to mention Greenspan's statements on oil.

America’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.

In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.

However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.

Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.

Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.

Sierra Leone Poll Battle Goes to Court.

BBC News
Will Ross
16 September 2007

Sierra Leone's ruling party is seeking an injunction against the electoral commission to stop it from publishing further presidential election results.
The party had earlier expressed concern about the commission investigating reports of unusually high voter turnout - mostly in government strongholds.

With three-quarters of votes from last Saturday's run-off counted, opposition leader Ernest Bai Koroma is set to win.

Observers have widely praised the newly-formed commission's conduct.

A lawyer for the governing party, Sierra Leone People's Party, confirmed he had filed an application for a court injunction against the National Electoral Commission.

This appears to be an attempt to prevent the electoral commission from announcing further results at a time when the Vice-President, Solomon Berewa, is trailing the opposition's Mr Koroma by a 20% margin.

Barring an unexpected and surprising last set of results the opposition candidate looks on course to win this election.

Democratic road

But the governing party has in recent days expressed concern over the conduct of the electoral commission which is currently investigating cases of excessively high voter turnout.

Some polling stations recorded more votes than registered voters.
The suspiciously high turnouts were mostly, although not exclusively, from governing party strongholds.

As the race to become Sierra Leone's next leader enters the final strait it looks as though the complaints are far from over.

Prior to a decade-long civil war, Sierra Leone had a series of rigged elections.

The hope is that now, five years after the end of the war, this election will set the country on a far more democratic road.