M&C
Jul 27, 2009, 6:22 GMT
By Nadeem Sarwar and Aqeel Yousafzai
Fear is spreading across University Town, an upmarket residential area in Pakistan's north-western city of Peshawar, due to the overt presence of the controversial US private security contractor Blackwater.
Sporting the customary dark glasses and carrying assault rifles, the mercenaries zoom around the neighbourhood in their black-coloured armoured Chevy Suburbans, and shout at motorists when occasionally stranded in a traffic jam.
The residents are mainly concerned about Blackwater's reputation as a ruthless, unbridled private army whose employees face multiple charges of murder, child prostitution and weapons smuggling in Iraq.
'Sometimes, these guys stand in the streets and behave rudely with the passers-by, sometimes they point guns at people without provocation' said Imtiaz Gul, an engineer, whose home is a few hundred metres from the US contractor's base on Chanar Road in University Town.
'Who rules our streets, the Pakistani government or the Americans? They have created a state within the state,' he added.
Repeated complaints to the authorities have been to no avail since, according to residents.
Blackwater provides security to the employees of Creative Associates International Inc (CAII), an American company carrying out multi-million-dollar development projects in the country's Islamic militancy-plagued Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
Founded in 1997 by Erik Prince, a former US Navy SEAL officer and a major contributor to Republican Party candidates, Blackwater has hired thousands of former military personnel from Western countries as well as other mercenaries from the Third World.
It emerged as the largest of the US Department of State's private security companies, winning multi-million-dollar contracts globally, but attracted a lot of media attention in September 2007 when its personnel killed 17 civilians in an unprovoked shooting while escorting a convoy of US State Department vehicles to a meeting in Baghdad.
The firm is now facing a civil lawsuit filed in the US state of Virginia by those who were injured and who lost family members in the massacre.
The company faces charges of human rights violations, child prostitution and possible supply of weapons to the Kurdistan Workers' Party, an Iraqi group designated by United Nations, European Union and NATO as a terrorist organization. It has been declared persona non grata in Iraq.
To conceal its bad reputation, the shadowy company renamed itself Xe Worldwide in February 2009 and Prince resigned as its chief executive officer the following month.
In Pakistan, the Interior Ministry asked the regional governments of all four provinces to keep an eye on the activities of Blackwater in early 2008, immediately after it was believed to have been hired by CAII, according to a media report.
CAII works locally under the name of FATA Development Programme Government to Community (FDPGC).
Lou Fintor, a spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad, said that Blackwater-Xe was not in any way associated with its missions in Pakistan. But the denial does not include the possibility that the security firm was working for a private US company.
Blackwater has recruited dozens of retired commandos from Pakistan's army and elite police force through its local sub-contractors, said an intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Some Pakistani security officials suggested that besides providing security to the aid workers, Blackwater was carrying out covert operations.
Among these were buying the loyalties of influential tribal elders and tracking the money flowing to al-Qaeda and Taliban through the national and international banks, something which perhaps goes far beyond the mandate of a private security firm.
Taliban and al-Qaeda militants who use the tribal regions to attack civilian and government targets inside Pakistan and NATO-led international forces in Afghanistan are also watching Blackwater's moves.
On June 9, suicide bombers drove an explosive-laden vehicle into Peshawar's sole five-star hotel, the Pearl Continental, after shooting the security guards, and detonated it at the side of the building where some Blackwater guards were staying.
Sixteen people died including four of the security firm's personnel - two Westerners and the same number of locals. Four more guards were injured.
The dead bodies and injured were moved quietly. Neither the Pakistani government nor any foreign official admitted these deaths, apparently at the request of US officials.
'Absolutely no comments,' Qazi Jamil, the senior superintendent of police in Peshawar said abruptly when German Press Agency dpa asked him about the Blackwater deaths.
But a minister in the North-West Frontier Province government, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he knew that some US private guards died but did not know how many and which firm they were from.
'The provincial government was not directly dealing with the issue. It's the federal intelligence agencies that handled it,' said the minister.
The possibility that Islamist militants might be plotting more attacks on the contractors is also a source of concern for many residents in University Town.
'In the first week of July we requested the interior minister in a letter that targets like Blackwater should be kept away from the residential areas,' said Ihsan Toro, a trader and member of council of citizens in University Town.
'Al-Qaeda and the Taliban must be after them,' added Toro.
17 October, 2009
Iraq set to buy Russian weaponry.
RIA Novosti
16 October 2009
A military delegation from Iraq will visit Moscow in the near future to discuss the purchase of Russian weaponry, an Iraqi parliament member has said.
"A large delegation from the Iraqi Defense Ministry will travel soon to Moscow for talks on arms purchases [from Russia]," Abbas al-Bayati said in an interview with the Al Iraqiya television.
According to the Iraqi MP, Baghdad is seeking to sign arms contracts with Russia, Germany, France, Serbia and the United States by the end of 2011 "to complete the creation of Iraqi Armed Forces and security forces."
Al-Bayati said the Iraqi leadership is interested in the diversification of arms suppliers, but takes into consideration the fact that "the military experience of the Iraqi army is based primarily on the Russian weaponry."
The Soviet Union had been the main supplier of military equipment to Iraq before an international embargo against the country was imposed in 1990 following the Iraqi attack on Kuwait.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003, the Iraqi Armed Forces had to be recreated almost from scratch, and they are still not sufficiently equipped with modern weaponry, especially aircraft.
Russia and Iraq started the discussion of reviving military-technical ties during the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to Moscow in April 2009.
16 October 2009
A military delegation from Iraq will visit Moscow in the near future to discuss the purchase of Russian weaponry, an Iraqi parliament member has said.
"A large delegation from the Iraqi Defense Ministry will travel soon to Moscow for talks on arms purchases [from Russia]," Abbas al-Bayati said in an interview with the Al Iraqiya television.
According to the Iraqi MP, Baghdad is seeking to sign arms contracts with Russia, Germany, France, Serbia and the United States by the end of 2011 "to complete the creation of Iraqi Armed Forces and security forces."
Al-Bayati said the Iraqi leadership is interested in the diversification of arms suppliers, but takes into consideration the fact that "the military experience of the Iraqi army is based primarily on the Russian weaponry."
The Soviet Union had been the main supplier of military equipment to Iraq before an international embargo against the country was imposed in 1990 following the Iraqi attack on Kuwait.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's regime in April 2003, the Iraqi Armed Forces had to be recreated almost from scratch, and they are still not sufficiently equipped with modern weaponry, especially aircraft.
Russia and Iraq started the discussion of reviving military-technical ties during the visit of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to Moscow in April 2009.
Shell Renegotiates with Iraq for Kirkuk Field Rights.
by Hassan Hafidh
Dow Jones Newswires
10/16/2009
URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=81510
ISTANBUL (Dow Jones), Oct. 16, 2009
Royal Dutch Shell PLC is renegotiating with Iraq about the Kirkuk oil field, one of Iraq's largest oil producing areas, after it didn't win access to the field in the country's first licensing auction held in Baghdad in June, company sources and Iraqi oil officials said Friday.
"Shell has held talks with the Oil Ministry on Kirkuk recently and both will meet again soon," one company source said.
Shell didn't accept the Iraqi Oil Ministry payment fees of $2 a barrel in June's auction. It wanted $7.89 payment fee for each extra produced barrel.
Shell has asked the Ministry to raise the per barrel fee, Iraqi oil officials said.
The Oil Ministry needs to get the approval of the Iraqi prime minister to allow such increase, they said.
The Shell-led consortium, which included China's CNPC and Sinopec (SHI) and Turkey's TAPO, offered to raise output to 825,000 barrels a day against Iraq's minimum 600,000 barrels a day. Sinopec is now blacklisted by the Oil Ministry because it bought Addax' share in a Kurdish oil field in northern Iraq. Baghdad doesn’t recognize the contracts signed by the Kurds with international companies.
Kirkuk is among eight fields on offer in Iraq's first post-war licensing round, when the only award was to BP PLC (BP) and CNPC for Rumaila.
Companies returned to the negotiating table after contract terms, especially regarding Iraq's 35% tax rate, were clarified, an Iraqi oil official said. They were also encouraged by BP's expectations of a 15%-20% investment return on Rumaila and hope the two neighboring fields will generate the same profits.
Iraq Tuesday awarded Zubair oil field to Italy's Eni SpA (E) and is on the verge of awarding a contract for West Qurna-1 after investors caved in on the Oil Ministry’s payment demands. Both fields were listed in the country's first bidding round.
Lukoil Holdings (LKOH.RS) and ConocoPhillips (COP) are competing against ExxonMobil Corp (XOM) and Shell to win West Qurna-1.
Both have agreed to the ministry’s payment fee of $1.90 a barrel, but each had in June different proposals for production increase. Lukoil proposed to increase production to 1.5 million barrels a day from around 260,000 barrels a day, while Shell proposed to increase to around 2.3 million barrels a day.
Iraq is planning a second bidding round in December when it would auction 10 groups of giant oil and gas fields.
Iraqi oil officials said crude oil production could reach 7 million barrels a day in six years. Iraq is currently producing around 2.4 million barrels a day.
Dow Jones Newswires
10/16/2009
URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=81510
ISTANBUL (Dow Jones), Oct. 16, 2009
Royal Dutch Shell PLC is renegotiating with Iraq about the Kirkuk oil field, one of Iraq's largest oil producing areas, after it didn't win access to the field in the country's first licensing auction held in Baghdad in June, company sources and Iraqi oil officials said Friday.
"Shell has held talks with the Oil Ministry on Kirkuk recently and both will meet again soon," one company source said.
Shell didn't accept the Iraqi Oil Ministry payment fees of $2 a barrel in June's auction. It wanted $7.89 payment fee for each extra produced barrel.
Shell has asked the Ministry to raise the per barrel fee, Iraqi oil officials said.
The Oil Ministry needs to get the approval of the Iraqi prime minister to allow such increase, they said.
The Shell-led consortium, which included China's CNPC and Sinopec (SHI) and Turkey's TAPO, offered to raise output to 825,000 barrels a day against Iraq's minimum 600,000 barrels a day. Sinopec is now blacklisted by the Oil Ministry because it bought Addax' share in a Kurdish oil field in northern Iraq. Baghdad doesn’t recognize the contracts signed by the Kurds with international companies.
Kirkuk is among eight fields on offer in Iraq's first post-war licensing round, when the only award was to BP PLC (BP) and CNPC for Rumaila.
Companies returned to the negotiating table after contract terms, especially regarding Iraq's 35% tax rate, were clarified, an Iraqi oil official said. They were also encouraged by BP's expectations of a 15%-20% investment return on Rumaila and hope the two neighboring fields will generate the same profits.
Iraq Tuesday awarded Zubair oil field to Italy's Eni SpA (E) and is on the verge of awarding a contract for West Qurna-1 after investors caved in on the Oil Ministry’s payment demands. Both fields were listed in the country's first bidding round.
Lukoil Holdings (LKOH.RS) and ConocoPhillips (COP) are competing against ExxonMobil Corp (XOM) and Shell to win West Qurna-1.
Both have agreed to the ministry’s payment fee of $1.90 a barrel, but each had in June different proposals for production increase. Lukoil proposed to increase production to 1.5 million barrels a day from around 260,000 barrels a day, while Shell proposed to increase to around 2.3 million barrels a day.
Iraq is planning a second bidding round in December when it would auction 10 groups of giant oil and gas fields.
Iraqi oil officials said crude oil production could reach 7 million barrels a day in six years. Iraq is currently producing around 2.4 million barrels a day.
16 October, 2009
Burundi: Review Rwandans’ Asylum Claims of Extreme Persecution.
Human Rights Watch
16 October 2009
The Government of Burundi should immediately evaluate the claims of up to 400 Rwandan asylum seekers and stop all efforts to coerce them to leave the country, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch also called on Rwandan authorities to stop pressuring Burundi to force the asylum seekers to return to Rwanda.
On October 12, 2009, Burundi induced many of the asylum seekers to return to Rwanda by falsely informing them that their refugee status had been denied. Burundian authorities agreed to halt the expulsions following queries by Human Rights Watch and other organizations.
"We are glad that Burundi has agreed to follow international law and evaluate the claims of these Rwandan asylum seekers," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The forced deportations should stop."
The Rwandans crossed into Burundi's northern provinces of Kirundo and Ngozi over the past several months. By late September, an estimated 100 to 400 people had arrived. Human Rights Watch interviewed several of them on October 14, and they appeared to have well-founded fears of being persecuted were they to return to Rwanda.
Without individually evaluating their claims - and under significant pressure from Rwanda - Burundi's minister of interior, Edouard Nduwimana, declared on October 8 that all the Rwandans should be "rapidly expelled" from the country.
On October 12, a Burundian government delegation that included the senior adviser to the governor of Kirundo and a police commissioner met with a large group of the Rwandan asylum seekers in Kirundo and informed them, falsely, that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had refused them refugee status and that they had to leave the country. They were told that they would be forced out if they did not leave "voluntarily." Many reportedly left for Rwanda the next day.
Kirundo provincial authorities tried to force another 17 Rwandans to leave on the afternoon of October 14, but Burundi's new national refugee agency, the National Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless People (ONPRA), intervened to stop the deportations. On October 15, officials of that agency told Human Rights Watch that no expulsions would take place. However, Human Rights Watch subsequently received reports that the 17 Rwandans are currently unaccounted for and may have left the country under pressure from the Burundian government. Kirundo officials whom Human Rights Watch tried to reach to confirm this information did not answer their telephones.
Burundi's new refugee agency, whose mandate includes evaluating the refugee claims of asylum seekers, began operating in April. Under Burundian law, asylum seekers should lodge their claims with the agency within 30 days of arriving in the country, except in the case of force majeure (extenuating circumstances). The agency currently only has offices in the capital, Bujumbura, a trek of many days from the Rwandan border for asylum seekers, many of whom are destitute. The asylum seekers' claim to Burundian local authorities that they feared returning to Rwanda should have qualified them, in effect, as having lodged asylum claims.
The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, to which Burundi is a state party, prohibits states from expelling or returning refugees to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The prohibition on forced return (refoulement) includes asylum seekers.
The African Union (formerly Organization of African Unity) Convention governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, to which Burundi is also a state party, not only prohibits refoulement but also calls upon states parties to receive refugees and secure their settlement. It also says that "[t]he grant of asylum to refugees is a peaceful and humanitarian act and shall not be regarded as an unfriendly act by any Member State."
The interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch with several of the Rwandans indicated that some may have credible fears of persecution in Rwanda. One said he was acquitted before Rwanda's community-based gacaca courts in 2006 on charges of having burned the house of a Tutsi during the 1994 genocide. In September, though, he was summoned to respond to the same charges, was convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He fled to Burundi.
Two others gave Human Rights Watch similar accounts of being re-tried for the same crimes in gacaca courts after their cases had already been resolved. International law prohibits putting a person on trial again for an offense for which the person has already been acquitted or convicted.
Two of the Rwandans reported that their neighbors had been taken from their homes in the middle of the night and had not been seen again. They said these abductions occurred in the Matana and Mpanda sectors of Rwanda's Southern Province. One said his neighbor was abducted by Rwanda's local defense forces, a group of community residents who patrol the neighborhood as informal police but do not have authority to carry out arrests.
Burundian administrative and police officials, along with a journalist and a human rights activist, told Human Rights Watch of two separate sightings in the past month of the bodies of young men, bearing signs of physical injury, in the Kanyaru River that separates Burundi from Rwanda. Burundian media reported that residents had seen as many as five bodies. The origin of these bodies remains unclear, but their presence has heightened the fear of the asylum seekers to return to Rwanda.
Rwanda has reportedly exerted political pressure on Burundi not to provide refugee status to Rwandans. On October 15, Rwanda's ambassador to Burundi was in Kirundo province, apparently because of the expulsions.
"Burundi should make clear that no more Rwandans will be deported in violation of international law," Gagnon said. "Burundi's need for good relations with Rwanda cannot displace the obligation to protect Rwandans in Burundi who fear persecution back home."
16 October 2009
The Government of Burundi should immediately evaluate the claims of up to 400 Rwandan asylum seekers and stop all efforts to coerce them to leave the country, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch also called on Rwandan authorities to stop pressuring Burundi to force the asylum seekers to return to Rwanda.
On October 12, 2009, Burundi induced many of the asylum seekers to return to Rwanda by falsely informing them that their refugee status had been denied. Burundian authorities agreed to halt the expulsions following queries by Human Rights Watch and other organizations.
"We are glad that Burundi has agreed to follow international law and evaluate the claims of these Rwandan asylum seekers," said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The forced deportations should stop."
The Rwandans crossed into Burundi's northern provinces of Kirundo and Ngozi over the past several months. By late September, an estimated 100 to 400 people had arrived. Human Rights Watch interviewed several of them on October 14, and they appeared to have well-founded fears of being persecuted were they to return to Rwanda.
Without individually evaluating their claims - and under significant pressure from Rwanda - Burundi's minister of interior, Edouard Nduwimana, declared on October 8 that all the Rwandans should be "rapidly expelled" from the country.
On October 12, a Burundian government delegation that included the senior adviser to the governor of Kirundo and a police commissioner met with a large group of the Rwandan asylum seekers in Kirundo and informed them, falsely, that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had refused them refugee status and that they had to leave the country. They were told that they would be forced out if they did not leave "voluntarily." Many reportedly left for Rwanda the next day.
Kirundo provincial authorities tried to force another 17 Rwandans to leave on the afternoon of October 14, but Burundi's new national refugee agency, the National Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless People (ONPRA), intervened to stop the deportations. On October 15, officials of that agency told Human Rights Watch that no expulsions would take place. However, Human Rights Watch subsequently received reports that the 17 Rwandans are currently unaccounted for and may have left the country under pressure from the Burundian government. Kirundo officials whom Human Rights Watch tried to reach to confirm this information did not answer their telephones.
Burundi's new refugee agency, whose mandate includes evaluating the refugee claims of asylum seekers, began operating in April. Under Burundian law, asylum seekers should lodge their claims with the agency within 30 days of arriving in the country, except in the case of force majeure (extenuating circumstances). The agency currently only has offices in the capital, Bujumbura, a trek of many days from the Rwandan border for asylum seekers, many of whom are destitute. The asylum seekers' claim to Burundian local authorities that they feared returning to Rwanda should have qualified them, in effect, as having lodged asylum claims.
The 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, to which Burundi is a state party, prohibits states from expelling or returning refugees to places where their lives or freedom would be threatened on account of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The prohibition on forced return (refoulement) includes asylum seekers.
The African Union (formerly Organization of African Unity) Convention governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, to which Burundi is also a state party, not only prohibits refoulement but also calls upon states parties to receive refugees and secure their settlement. It also says that "[t]he grant of asylum to refugees is a peaceful and humanitarian act and shall not be regarded as an unfriendly act by any Member State."
The interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch with several of the Rwandans indicated that some may have credible fears of persecution in Rwanda. One said he was acquitted before Rwanda's community-based gacaca courts in 2006 on charges of having burned the house of a Tutsi during the 1994 genocide. In September, though, he was summoned to respond to the same charges, was convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. He fled to Burundi.
Two others gave Human Rights Watch similar accounts of being re-tried for the same crimes in gacaca courts after their cases had already been resolved. International law prohibits putting a person on trial again for an offense for which the person has already been acquitted or convicted.
Two of the Rwandans reported that their neighbors had been taken from their homes in the middle of the night and had not been seen again. They said these abductions occurred in the Matana and Mpanda sectors of Rwanda's Southern Province. One said his neighbor was abducted by Rwanda's local defense forces, a group of community residents who patrol the neighborhood as informal police but do not have authority to carry out arrests.
Burundian administrative and police officials, along with a journalist and a human rights activist, told Human Rights Watch of two separate sightings in the past month of the bodies of young men, bearing signs of physical injury, in the Kanyaru River that separates Burundi from Rwanda. Burundian media reported that residents had seen as many as five bodies. The origin of these bodies remains unclear, but their presence has heightened the fear of the asylum seekers to return to Rwanda.
Rwanda has reportedly exerted political pressure on Burundi not to provide refugee status to Rwandans. On October 15, Rwanda's ambassador to Burundi was in Kirundo province, apparently because of the expulsions.
"Burundi should make clear that no more Rwandans will be deported in violation of international law," Gagnon said. "Burundi's need for good relations with Rwanda cannot displace the obligation to protect Rwandans in Burundi who fear persecution back home."
China, Kenya discuss new corridor for southern Sudan oil.
Sudan Tribune
16 October 2009
Kenyan and Chinese government is discussing the construction of a corridor to export southern Sudan production of oil through a new port.
Last year Kenya discussed the $3.5bn project with Qatar in return for a lease on 40,000 hectares of land to grow crops; but the deal was signed between the two countries.
In a statement to the Financial Times, the Kenyan Prime Minister who flew to Beijing on Wednesday said he considers China a better suited to achieve the project which also include the development of a Port in Lamu.
“The Chinese offer the full package,” he said, referring to the combination of financing and technical expertise that state-backed Chinese banks and construction companies have rolled out across Africa.
The land and rail corridor can provide an alternative route for southern Sudan oil which now transported by a pipeline to Port Sudan in north eastern part of the country.
The idea of a pipeline to transport the southern Sudan oil through Kenyan ports had been abandoned because of the quality of heavy crude and the high cost of the project.
16 October 2009
Kenyan and Chinese government is discussing the construction of a corridor to export southern Sudan production of oil through a new port.
Last year Kenya discussed the $3.5bn project with Qatar in return for a lease on 40,000 hectares of land to grow crops; but the deal was signed between the two countries.
In a statement to the Financial Times, the Kenyan Prime Minister who flew to Beijing on Wednesday said he considers China a better suited to achieve the project which also include the development of a Port in Lamu.
“The Chinese offer the full package,” he said, referring to the combination of financing and technical expertise that state-backed Chinese banks and construction companies have rolled out across Africa.
The land and rail corridor can provide an alternative route for southern Sudan oil which now transported by a pipeline to Port Sudan in north eastern part of the country.
The idea of a pipeline to transport the southern Sudan oil through Kenyan ports had been abandoned because of the quality of heavy crude and the high cost of the project.
15 October, 2009
Arms deal to Zim put on hold.
Daily News
By Caiphus Kgosana
October 15 2009
South Africa has halted arms sales to Zimbabwe, but has approved weapons sales to Venezuela and is considering similar requests from Syria, says Justice Minister Jeff Radebe.
He chairs the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), the government arms sales watchdog.
Speaking in the National Assembly in reply to a question from David Maynier of the DA, Radebe said that since July, South Africa had decided to halt all pending arms sales to Zimbabwe.
Radebe told Maynier that the decision had nothing to do with pressure from the DA.
'We cannot be dictated to by the DA who to trade arms with...'
"For your information, we have not taken any decision to sell arms to Zimbabwe since July because we monitor transactions on a case-to-case basis," he said.
Radebe insisted that the government would not be dictated to by the DA on its arms deals.
Continues Below ↓
"We are guided by our conscience and the constitution and the laws of this country. We cannot be dictated to by the DA who to trade arms with..."
Maynier caused a stir in August when he released documents that revealed that the government had either approved or had arms sales pending to a number of rogue states, including North Korea, Iran, Syria and Zimbabwe.
This elicited an angry response from the ANC, which demanded that he be charged for being in possession of classified arms trade documents, in contravention of the National Conventional Arms Control Act.
An ANC request to National Assembly Speaker, Max Sisulu, that Maynier be axed from the defence committee was not granted, for a lack of grounds. But the Speaker has since suggested that "necessary rules" be developed to prevent MPs from disclosing sensitive information that could harm national security.
Radebe also revealed that the NCACC had approved arms sales to Venezuela, which the DA had listed as one of the rogue states with which South Africa was entering into arms deals.
"Venezuela is one of our most important trading partners and we shall continue to do business with them.
"We have approved arms to Venezuela. There's nothing wrong with that and it's going to increase trade between our two countries," he said.
Radebe insisted that the deals the arms control committee had agreed to were above board and that pending transactions with Iran had been halted when the UN imposed an arms embargo on that country.
He said Maynier's allegations that the country had flouted UN laws and embargoes in its arms sales were untrue.
"I think he needs to be examined, this gentleman, because he repeats this lie time and time again. We are not accountable to Maynier and the DA.
"Nothing we have done is in violation of UN regulations on arms embargoes... We don't know why he keeps on harping on this issue," he said.
By Caiphus Kgosana
October 15 2009
South Africa has halted arms sales to Zimbabwe, but has approved weapons sales to Venezuela and is considering similar requests from Syria, says Justice Minister Jeff Radebe.
He chairs the National Conventional Arms Control Committee (NCACC), the government arms sales watchdog.
Speaking in the National Assembly in reply to a question from David Maynier of the DA, Radebe said that since July, South Africa had decided to halt all pending arms sales to Zimbabwe.
Radebe told Maynier that the decision had nothing to do with pressure from the DA.
'We cannot be dictated to by the DA who to trade arms with...'
"For your information, we have not taken any decision to sell arms to Zimbabwe since July because we monitor transactions on a case-to-case basis," he said.
Radebe insisted that the government would not be dictated to by the DA on its arms deals.
Continues Below ↓
"We are guided by our conscience and the constitution and the laws of this country. We cannot be dictated to by the DA who to trade arms with..."
Maynier caused a stir in August when he released documents that revealed that the government had either approved or had arms sales pending to a number of rogue states, including North Korea, Iran, Syria and Zimbabwe.
This elicited an angry response from the ANC, which demanded that he be charged for being in possession of classified arms trade documents, in contravention of the National Conventional Arms Control Act.
An ANC request to National Assembly Speaker, Max Sisulu, that Maynier be axed from the defence committee was not granted, for a lack of grounds. But the Speaker has since suggested that "necessary rules" be developed to prevent MPs from disclosing sensitive information that could harm national security.
Radebe also revealed that the NCACC had approved arms sales to Venezuela, which the DA had listed as one of the rogue states with which South Africa was entering into arms deals.
"Venezuela is one of our most important trading partners and we shall continue to do business with them.
"We have approved arms to Venezuela. There's nothing wrong with that and it's going to increase trade between our two countries," he said.
Radebe insisted that the deals the arms control committee had agreed to were above board and that pending transactions with Iran had been halted when the UN imposed an arms embargo on that country.
He said Maynier's allegations that the country had flouted UN laws and embargoes in its arms sales were untrue.
"I think he needs to be examined, this gentleman, because he repeats this lie time and time again. We are not accountable to Maynier and the DA.
"Nothing we have done is in violation of UN regulations on arms embargoes... We don't know why he keeps on harping on this issue," he said.
ExxonMobil Takes U.S.$4 Billion Stake in Tullow's Uganda and Ghana Projects.
Daily Monitor
By Matt Brown
13 October 2009
Kampala — Energy giant Exxon is betting big on Tullow's West African operations, investing $4 billion (about Shs7 trillion) in the company's Jubilee field, according to people familiar with the deal. Tullow has been hinting that it was looking for partners to invest in its operation in Uganda and Ghana.
Mr Tim O'Hanlon, Tullow Oil's vice-president for African business, told the Business Power that they were interested in "spreading [their] equity around."
When asked if that included Uganda, Mr O'Hanlon said: "Yes...Uganda and Ghana are the jewels in our crown."
He noted that Tullow has 100 per cent equity in many of its Ugandan exploration blocks, unusual in the oil business.
The Jubilee has also attracted investment from major private equity firms and had been the subject of a heated bidding war, which included state-owned Chinese player, CNOOC.
Even as oil the company profits spiked last year, investment in new plays stagnated. The market tightened as creeping resource nationalism caused many countries with significant reserves to restrict the operations of independent oil companies in favour of national champions.
Oil firms are thus playing a premium for oil fields in countries open to private investment, such as Ghana and Uganda.
Tullow hopes that Jubilee will begin to produce next year, eventually generating 120, 000 barrels per day. Development in Ghana has proceeded much faster than in Uganda because the infrastructural challenges that dog the industry here are not present in Ghana, where the industry is offshore.
Tullow's share price dipped 0.58 per cent in trading last week, but is up nearly 40 per cent year-over-year. Oil rose 52 cents to settle at $68.56.
Tullow Oil is an Irish-based oil and gas exploration and production business headquartered in London. It is listed on the Irish and London Stock Exchanges and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and ExxonMobil is an American oil and gas corporation.
It was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil.
By Matt Brown
13 October 2009
Kampala — Energy giant Exxon is betting big on Tullow's West African operations, investing $4 billion (about Shs7 trillion) in the company's Jubilee field, according to people familiar with the deal. Tullow has been hinting that it was looking for partners to invest in its operation in Uganda and Ghana.
Mr Tim O'Hanlon, Tullow Oil's vice-president for African business, told the Business Power that they were interested in "spreading [their] equity around."
When asked if that included Uganda, Mr O'Hanlon said: "Yes...Uganda and Ghana are the jewels in our crown."
He noted that Tullow has 100 per cent equity in many of its Ugandan exploration blocks, unusual in the oil business.
The Jubilee has also attracted investment from major private equity firms and had been the subject of a heated bidding war, which included state-owned Chinese player, CNOOC.
Even as oil the company profits spiked last year, investment in new plays stagnated. The market tightened as creeping resource nationalism caused many countries with significant reserves to restrict the operations of independent oil companies in favour of national champions.
Oil firms are thus playing a premium for oil fields in countries open to private investment, such as Ghana and Uganda.
Tullow hopes that Jubilee will begin to produce next year, eventually generating 120, 000 barrels per day. Development in Ghana has proceeded much faster than in Uganda because the infrastructural challenges that dog the industry here are not present in Ghana, where the industry is offshore.
Tullow's share price dipped 0.58 per cent in trading last week, but is up nearly 40 per cent year-over-year. Oil rose 52 cents to settle at $68.56.
Tullow Oil is an Irish-based oil and gas exploration and production business headquartered in London. It is listed on the Irish and London Stock Exchanges and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and ExxonMobil is an American oil and gas corporation.
It was formed on November 30, 1999, by the merger of Exxon and Mobil.
Amended Text of Kerry-Lugar Bill - "Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act."
14 October 2009
Joint Explanatory Statement: The following is an explanation of S. 1707, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009.
The final text of the legislation reflects an agreement reached by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The purpose of this Explanatory Statement is to facilitate accurate interpretation of the text and to ensure faithful implementation of its provisions in accordance with the intentions of the legislation.
The core intent of the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act is to demonstrate the American people’s long-term commitment to the people of Pakistan.
The United States values its friendship with the Pakistani people and honours the great sacrifices made by Pakistani security forces in the fight against extremism, and the legislation reflects the goals shared by our two governments.
The legislation does not seek in any way to compromise Pakistan’s sovereignty, impinge on Pakistan’s national security interests, or micromanage any aspect of Pakistani military or civilian operations.
There are no conditions on Pakistan attached to the authorisation of $7.5 billion in non-military aid. The only requirements on this funding are financial accountability measures that Congress is imposing on the US executive branch, to ensure that this assistance supports programs that most benefit the Pakistani people.
Summary of Congressional Intent
The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 (the “Act”) establishes a legislative foundation for a strengthened partnership between the United States and Pakistan, based on a shared commitment to improving the living conditions of the people of Pakistan through strengthening democracy and the rule of law, sustainable economic development, and combating terrorism and extremism. It is the intent of Congress to strengthen the long-term people-to-people relationship between the United States and Pakistan by investing directly in the needs of the Pakistani people. This legislation is intended to fortify a lasting partnership with Pakistan based on mutual trust.
The overall level of economic assistance authorized annually by this legislation is tripled over FY 2008 US funding levels, with the bulk of aid intended for projects such as schools, roads, medical clinics, and infrastructure development. The funds directly authorised by this Act – $1.5 billion in economic and development assistance annually for five years, with a similar amount envisioned for a subsequent five years – place no conditions on the Government of Pakistan. The only requirements are accountability measures placed on the United States executive branch to ensure that the aid directly benefits the Pakistani people.
This Act fully recognizes and respects the independence of Pakistan as a
sovereign nation. The purpose of this Act is to forge a closer collaborative relationship between Pakistan and the United States, not to dictate the national policy or impinge on the sovereignty of Pakistan in any way. Any interpretation of this Act which suggests that the United States does not fully recognize and respect the sovereignty of Pakistan would be directly contrary to Congressional intent.
The certifications in the Act regarding certain limited forms of security assistance are consistent with previous Congressional legislation regarding security assistance to Pakistan and other nations. In all cases, they align with the aims of, and serve to reinforce the publicly-articulated positions of, the democratically-elected Government of Pakistan, and Pakistani military leaders, to combat extremists and militants.
Sections 1-4: Strengthening a Relationship Founded on Mutual Respect
Sections 1-4 establish the framework and context for the legislative provisions that follow. The Findings and the Statement of Principles demonstrate an unequivocal appreciation for the friendship of the Pakistani people, and for the sacrifices made by the Pakistani security forces and people in fighting extremism. The Findings in Section 3 include:
Section 3(1): “Congress finds the following: The people of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the United States share a long history of friendship and comity, and the interests of both nations are well-served by strengthening and deepening this friendship.”
Section 3(4): “Pakistan is a major non-NATO ally of the United States and has been a valuable partner in the battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban, but much more remains to be accomplished by both nations. The struggle against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and affiliated terrorist groups has led to the deaths of several thousand Pakistani civilians and members of the security forces of Pakistan over the past seven years.”
The Statement of Principles in Section 4 include:
Section 4(1): “Pakistan is a critical friend and ally to the United States, both in times of strife and in times of peace, and the two countries share many common goals, including combating terrorism and violent radicalism, solidifying democracy and rule of law in Pakistan, and promoting the social and economic development of Pakistan.”
Section 4(4): “The United States supports Pakistan’s struggle against extremist elements and recognises the profound sacrifice made by Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, including the loss of more than 1,900 soldiers and police since 2001 in combat with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremist and terrorist groups.”
Title I: Democratic, Economic and Development Assistance for Pakistan
This Title contains the core intention of this legislation: To make a long-term commitment to the people of Pakistan by tripling non-military assistance, free of any conditions on the Pakistani government. The purposes set forth for the $7.5 billion that is authorized here are all intended to reflect the expressed priorities of the Pakistani people. Specifically, Section 101(a) provides that:
“The President is authorised to provide assistance to Pakistan to support the consolidation of democratic institutions; to support the expansion of rule of law, build the capacity of government institutions, and promote respect for internationally-recognized human rights; to promote economic freedoms and sustainable economic development; to support investment in people, including those displaced in on-going counterinsurgency operations; and to strengthen public diplomacy.”
The funds authorised under Title I are intended to be used to work with and benefit Pakistani organizations. Specifically, Section 101(c)(3) provides that:
“The President is encouraged, as appropriate, to utilize Pakistani firms and community and local nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan, including through host country contracts, and to work with local leaders to provide assistance under this section.”
Section 102 (a) makes clear that there are no conditions placed on the Pakistani government for delivery of the $7.5 billion in assistance. The only accounting requirements are of the US executive branch.
Section 102(d) makes clear that a long term commitment to increased civilian assistance for the people of Pakistan is envisioned by stating that it is the desire of Congress that the amounts authorized for fiscal years 2010-2014 shall continue from fiscal years 2015-2019.
Section 103(b) authorizes establishment of field offices for Inspectors General to audit and oversee expenditure of this assistance. It is the intent of Congress that such offices would be established in consultation with appropriate Pakistani authorities for the purpose of ensuring optimal management of resources.
Title II: Security Assistance for Pakistan
The intention of this section is to strengthen cooperative efforts to confront extremism. The purposes of security assistance are intended to be completely cooperative, and reflect the intention that such assistance be used to support Pakistan in achieving its stated objectives in winning the ongoing counterinsurgency, defeating terrorist organizations that threaten Pakistan, and strengthening democratic institutions. Specifically, Section
201(1) “Purposes of Assistance” states that:
“The purposes of assistance under this title are –
(1) To support Pakistan’s paramount national security need to fight and win the ongoing counterinsurgency within its borders in accordance with its national security interests;
(2) To work with the Government of Pakistan to improve Pakistan’s border security and control and help prevent any Pakistani territory from being used as a base or conduit for terrorist attacks in Pakistan, or elsewhere;
(3) To work in close cooperation with the Government of Pakistan to coordinate action against extremist and terrorist targets; and
(4) To help strengthen the institutions of democratic governance...
The provisions applied to certain limited portions of US security assistance in Section 203 are intended to be fully in line with the existing policy of the Government of Pakistan. Specifically, Section 203(c)(1) reflects our understanding that cooperative efforts currently being undertaken by the Governments of Pakistan and the United States to combat proliferation will continue.
Section 203(c)(2) reflects the intent that US security assistance is used in furtherance of the purposes set forth in Section 201 above, e.g., ensuring Pakistan’s security, winning the counterinsurgency within Pakistan, preventing territory from being used for terrorist attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere, and coordinating action against extremist and terrorist targets. This section requires a certification by the US executive branch to Congress regarding the efforts and progress made in achieving these purposes, and includes a series of factors to be considered collectively by the Secretary of State in making this assessment.
Section 203(c)(3) includes a provision intended to express support for democratic institutions in Pakistan.
Section 203(e) contains a waiver making clear that this certification could be waived if the determination is made by the Secretary of State in the interests of national security that this was necessary to continue such assistance.
Title III: Strategy, Accountability, Monitoring, and Other Provisions.
The intention of this section is to ensure that there is transparency and accountability in the way authorized assistance is spent. This Title requires the US executive branch to provide various reports to Congress designed to demonstrate that funds are being used for the purposes set forth in Title I and Title II; there are no requirements on the Government of Pakistan.
Section 301 “Strategy Reports” requires three reports from the US executive branch that detail a plan for how US assistance to Pakistan will be spent and evaluated and a regional security plan for how the United States can best work with its partners for “effective counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts.”
Section 302 “Monitoring Reports” reflects the need for ongoing consultation between the U.S executive branch and Congress on monitoring US assistance to Pakistan, including a “Semi-Annual Monitoring Report” where:
“The Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Defence, shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report that describes the assistance provided under this Act during the preceding 180-day period.”
The many requirements of this report are intended as a way for Congress to assess how effectively US funds are being spent, shortfalls in US resources that hinder the use of such funds, and steps the Government of Pakistan has taken to advance our mutual interests in countering extremism and nuclear proliferation and strengthening democratic institutions.
There is no intent to, and nothing in this Act in any way suggests that there should be, any US role in micromanaging internal Pakistani affairs, including the promotion of Pakistani military officers or the internal operations of the Pakistani military.
The reports envisioned in this Section are not binding on Pakistan, and require only the provision of information by the executive branch to the US Congress, in furtherance of the Act’s stated purpose of strengthening civilian institutions and the democratically-elected Government of Pakistan.
Joint Explanatory Statement: The following is an explanation of S. 1707, the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009.
The final text of the legislation reflects an agreement reached by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the House Committee on Foreign Affairs.
The purpose of this Explanatory Statement is to facilitate accurate interpretation of the text and to ensure faithful implementation of its provisions in accordance with the intentions of the legislation.
The core intent of the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act is to demonstrate the American people’s long-term commitment to the people of Pakistan.
The United States values its friendship with the Pakistani people and honours the great sacrifices made by Pakistani security forces in the fight against extremism, and the legislation reflects the goals shared by our two governments.
The legislation does not seek in any way to compromise Pakistan’s sovereignty, impinge on Pakistan’s national security interests, or micromanage any aspect of Pakistani military or civilian operations.
There are no conditions on Pakistan attached to the authorisation of $7.5 billion in non-military aid. The only requirements on this funding are financial accountability measures that Congress is imposing on the US executive branch, to ensure that this assistance supports programs that most benefit the Pakistani people.
Summary of Congressional Intent
The Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009 (the “Act”) establishes a legislative foundation for a strengthened partnership between the United States and Pakistan, based on a shared commitment to improving the living conditions of the people of Pakistan through strengthening democracy and the rule of law, sustainable economic development, and combating terrorism and extremism. It is the intent of Congress to strengthen the long-term people-to-people relationship between the United States and Pakistan by investing directly in the needs of the Pakistani people. This legislation is intended to fortify a lasting partnership with Pakistan based on mutual trust.
The overall level of economic assistance authorized annually by this legislation is tripled over FY 2008 US funding levels, with the bulk of aid intended for projects such as schools, roads, medical clinics, and infrastructure development. The funds directly authorised by this Act – $1.5 billion in economic and development assistance annually for five years, with a similar amount envisioned for a subsequent five years – place no conditions on the Government of Pakistan. The only requirements are accountability measures placed on the United States executive branch to ensure that the aid directly benefits the Pakistani people.
This Act fully recognizes and respects the independence of Pakistan as a
sovereign nation. The purpose of this Act is to forge a closer collaborative relationship between Pakistan and the United States, not to dictate the national policy or impinge on the sovereignty of Pakistan in any way. Any interpretation of this Act which suggests that the United States does not fully recognize and respect the sovereignty of Pakistan would be directly contrary to Congressional intent.
The certifications in the Act regarding certain limited forms of security assistance are consistent with previous Congressional legislation regarding security assistance to Pakistan and other nations. In all cases, they align with the aims of, and serve to reinforce the publicly-articulated positions of, the democratically-elected Government of Pakistan, and Pakistani military leaders, to combat extremists and militants.
Sections 1-4: Strengthening a Relationship Founded on Mutual Respect
Sections 1-4 establish the framework and context for the legislative provisions that follow. The Findings and the Statement of Principles demonstrate an unequivocal appreciation for the friendship of the Pakistani people, and for the sacrifices made by the Pakistani security forces and people in fighting extremism. The Findings in Section 3 include:
Section 3(1): “Congress finds the following: The people of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the United States share a long history of friendship and comity, and the interests of both nations are well-served by strengthening and deepening this friendship.”
Section 3(4): “Pakistan is a major non-NATO ally of the United States and has been a valuable partner in the battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban, but much more remains to be accomplished by both nations. The struggle against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and affiliated terrorist groups has led to the deaths of several thousand Pakistani civilians and members of the security forces of Pakistan over the past seven years.”
The Statement of Principles in Section 4 include:
Section 4(1): “Pakistan is a critical friend and ally to the United States, both in times of strife and in times of peace, and the two countries share many common goals, including combating terrorism and violent radicalism, solidifying democracy and rule of law in Pakistan, and promoting the social and economic development of Pakistan.”
Section 4(4): “The United States supports Pakistan’s struggle against extremist elements and recognises the profound sacrifice made by Pakistan in the fight against terrorism, including the loss of more than 1,900 soldiers and police since 2001 in combat with al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other extremist and terrorist groups.”
Title I: Democratic, Economic and Development Assistance for Pakistan
This Title contains the core intention of this legislation: To make a long-term commitment to the people of Pakistan by tripling non-military assistance, free of any conditions on the Pakistani government. The purposes set forth for the $7.5 billion that is authorized here are all intended to reflect the expressed priorities of the Pakistani people. Specifically, Section 101(a) provides that:
“The President is authorised to provide assistance to Pakistan to support the consolidation of democratic institutions; to support the expansion of rule of law, build the capacity of government institutions, and promote respect for internationally-recognized human rights; to promote economic freedoms and sustainable economic development; to support investment in people, including those displaced in on-going counterinsurgency operations; and to strengthen public diplomacy.”
The funds authorised under Title I are intended to be used to work with and benefit Pakistani organizations. Specifically, Section 101(c)(3) provides that:
“The President is encouraged, as appropriate, to utilize Pakistani firms and community and local nongovernmental organizations in Pakistan, including through host country contracts, and to work with local leaders to provide assistance under this section.”
Section 102 (a) makes clear that there are no conditions placed on the Pakistani government for delivery of the $7.5 billion in assistance. The only accounting requirements are of the US executive branch.
Section 102(d) makes clear that a long term commitment to increased civilian assistance for the people of Pakistan is envisioned by stating that it is the desire of Congress that the amounts authorized for fiscal years 2010-2014 shall continue from fiscal years 2015-2019.
Section 103(b) authorizes establishment of field offices for Inspectors General to audit and oversee expenditure of this assistance. It is the intent of Congress that such offices would be established in consultation with appropriate Pakistani authorities for the purpose of ensuring optimal management of resources.
Title II: Security Assistance for Pakistan
The intention of this section is to strengthen cooperative efforts to confront extremism. The purposes of security assistance are intended to be completely cooperative, and reflect the intention that such assistance be used to support Pakistan in achieving its stated objectives in winning the ongoing counterinsurgency, defeating terrorist organizations that threaten Pakistan, and strengthening democratic institutions. Specifically, Section
201(1) “Purposes of Assistance” states that:
“The purposes of assistance under this title are –
(1) To support Pakistan’s paramount national security need to fight and win the ongoing counterinsurgency within its borders in accordance with its national security interests;
(2) To work with the Government of Pakistan to improve Pakistan’s border security and control and help prevent any Pakistani territory from being used as a base or conduit for terrorist attacks in Pakistan, or elsewhere;
(3) To work in close cooperation with the Government of Pakistan to coordinate action against extremist and terrorist targets; and
(4) To help strengthen the institutions of democratic governance...
The provisions applied to certain limited portions of US security assistance in Section 203 are intended to be fully in line with the existing policy of the Government of Pakistan. Specifically, Section 203(c)(1) reflects our understanding that cooperative efforts currently being undertaken by the Governments of Pakistan and the United States to combat proliferation will continue.
Section 203(c)(2) reflects the intent that US security assistance is used in furtherance of the purposes set forth in Section 201 above, e.g., ensuring Pakistan’s security, winning the counterinsurgency within Pakistan, preventing territory from being used for terrorist attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere, and coordinating action against extremist and terrorist targets. This section requires a certification by the US executive branch to Congress regarding the efforts and progress made in achieving these purposes, and includes a series of factors to be considered collectively by the Secretary of State in making this assessment.
Section 203(c)(3) includes a provision intended to express support for democratic institutions in Pakistan.
Section 203(e) contains a waiver making clear that this certification could be waived if the determination is made by the Secretary of State in the interests of national security that this was necessary to continue such assistance.
Title III: Strategy, Accountability, Monitoring, and Other Provisions.
The intention of this section is to ensure that there is transparency and accountability in the way authorized assistance is spent. This Title requires the US executive branch to provide various reports to Congress designed to demonstrate that funds are being used for the purposes set forth in Title I and Title II; there are no requirements on the Government of Pakistan.
Section 301 “Strategy Reports” requires three reports from the US executive branch that detail a plan for how US assistance to Pakistan will be spent and evaluated and a regional security plan for how the United States can best work with its partners for “effective counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts.”
Section 302 “Monitoring Reports” reflects the need for ongoing consultation between the U.S executive branch and Congress on monitoring US assistance to Pakistan, including a “Semi-Annual Monitoring Report” where:
“The Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of Defence, shall submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report that describes the assistance provided under this Act during the preceding 180-day period.”
The many requirements of this report are intended as a way for Congress to assess how effectively US funds are being spent, shortfalls in US resources that hinder the use of such funds, and steps the Government of Pakistan has taken to advance our mutual interests in countering extremism and nuclear proliferation and strengthening democratic institutions.
There is no intent to, and nothing in this Act in any way suggests that there should be, any US role in micromanaging internal Pakistani affairs, including the promotion of Pakistani military officers or the internal operations of the Pakistani military.
The reports envisioned in this Section are not binding on Pakistan, and require only the provision of information by the executive branch to the US Congress, in furtherance of the Act’s stated purpose of strengthening civilian institutions and the democratically-elected Government of Pakistan.
14 October, 2009
Irishman killed in Bolivia was linked to bomb attack, inquest told.
The Guardian
By Peter Walker
14 October 2009
An Irish man shot dead in Bolivia after allegedly becoming mixed up in a rightwing plot to assassinate the country's president was killed by a single bullet wound to the heart, possibly inflicted as he sat up in bed, an inquest heard yesterday.
Security worker Michael Dwyer, 24, was killed when police raided a hotel in the capital, Santa Cruz, on 16 April. A local autopsy said he had been killed by six bullets. But Paul Malone, solicitor for the Dwyer family, told Dublin County coroner's court that the Irish state pathologist had found just one bullet wound, which was apparently fired from above.
Dwyer was killed in the raid together with Eduardo Rozsa Flores, a Bolivian of Hungarian descent who held Croatian citizenship, and Arpad Magyarosi, a Romanian with Hungarian citizenship. The other two had suspected links to a far-right group blamed for attacks on indigenous Bolivians, and authorities said they had plotted to kill Evo Morales, Bolivia's president, who is from an indigenous background.
The Irish government has requested an international investigation into Dwyer's death following reports that the three men were asleep when the shooting started. Bolivian police say they died during a 30-minute gun battle. At the inquest, Malone also questioned why authorities waited three weeks to reveal that two guns were found in Dwyer's room, and why reporters and members of the public were allowed into the room after the deaths.
The inquest also heard from Bolivia's ambassador to the UK, Beatriz Souviron, who said that Dwyer had travelled into the country on an airline ticket paid for by a Bolivian businessman subsequently arrested for being part of a separatist terrorist movement. Souviron said the three dead men had been under investigation over a bomb attack on the home of a Bolivian cardinal and the discovery of a cache of arms and explosives.
The inquest jury returned an open verdict. After the hearing, Dwyer's parents, Martin and Caroline, said they wanted to know the truth about how their son died. "Only a well resourced investigation, meeting internationally recognised standards, into the circumstances of Michael's violent death can help us find the truth, and we urge the minister for foreign affairs, Micheál Martin, to mobilise such an investigation," they said.
Morales has previously rejected such a request, but Souviron indicated this could change. "I will have to ask my government and foreign minister about that, but I am sure they will co-operate," she said.
During the inquest, Dwyer's mother said her son first flew out to Bolivia in November 2008 to take a course in personal security and protection, and then extended his visa after saying he had found work. He is believed to have come under the influence of Rozsa Flores after meeting supporters of his through his security work in Ireland.
Rozsa Flores, a 49-year-old leftwing journalist turned far-right adventurer, with antisemitic views, joined Croatian forces when war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, leading an armed group which attracted foreign rightwing elements.
By Peter Walker
14 October 2009
An Irish man shot dead in Bolivia after allegedly becoming mixed up in a rightwing plot to assassinate the country's president was killed by a single bullet wound to the heart, possibly inflicted as he sat up in bed, an inquest heard yesterday.
Security worker Michael Dwyer, 24, was killed when police raided a hotel in the capital, Santa Cruz, on 16 April. A local autopsy said he had been killed by six bullets. But Paul Malone, solicitor for the Dwyer family, told Dublin County coroner's court that the Irish state pathologist had found just one bullet wound, which was apparently fired from above.
Dwyer was killed in the raid together with Eduardo Rozsa Flores, a Bolivian of Hungarian descent who held Croatian citizenship, and Arpad Magyarosi, a Romanian with Hungarian citizenship. The other two had suspected links to a far-right group blamed for attacks on indigenous Bolivians, and authorities said they had plotted to kill Evo Morales, Bolivia's president, who is from an indigenous background.
The Irish government has requested an international investigation into Dwyer's death following reports that the three men were asleep when the shooting started. Bolivian police say they died during a 30-minute gun battle. At the inquest, Malone also questioned why authorities waited three weeks to reveal that two guns were found in Dwyer's room, and why reporters and members of the public were allowed into the room after the deaths.
The inquest also heard from Bolivia's ambassador to the UK, Beatriz Souviron, who said that Dwyer had travelled into the country on an airline ticket paid for by a Bolivian businessman subsequently arrested for being part of a separatist terrorist movement. Souviron said the three dead men had been under investigation over a bomb attack on the home of a Bolivian cardinal and the discovery of a cache of arms and explosives.
The inquest jury returned an open verdict. After the hearing, Dwyer's parents, Martin and Caroline, said they wanted to know the truth about how their son died. "Only a well resourced investigation, meeting internationally recognised standards, into the circumstances of Michael's violent death can help us find the truth, and we urge the minister for foreign affairs, Micheál Martin, to mobilise such an investigation," they said.
Morales has previously rejected such a request, but Souviron indicated this could change. "I will have to ask my government and foreign minister about that, but I am sure they will co-operate," she said.
During the inquest, Dwyer's mother said her son first flew out to Bolivia in November 2008 to take a course in personal security and protection, and then extended his visa after saying he had found work. He is believed to have come under the influence of Rozsa Flores after meeting supporters of his through his security work in Ireland.
Rozsa Flores, a 49-year-old leftwing journalist turned far-right adventurer, with antisemitic views, joined Croatian forces when war broke out in the former Yugoslavia, leading an armed group which attracted foreign rightwing elements.
What Really Happened in Rwanda?
By: Christian Davenport and Allan C. Stam
October 06, 2009
In 1998 and 1999, we went to Rwanda and returned several times in subsequent years for a simple reason: We wanted to discover what had happened there during the 100 days in 1994. What was the source of our curiosity? Well, our motivations were complex. In part, we felt guilty about ignoring the events when they took place and were largely overshadowed in the U.S. by such "news" as the O.J. Simpson murder case. We felt that at least we could do something to clarify what had occurred in an effort to respect the dead and assist in preventing this kind of mass atrocity in the future. We were both also in need of something new, professionally speaking. Although tenured, our research agendas felt staid. Rwanda was a way out of the rut and into something significant.
Although well-intentioned, we were not at all ready for what we would encounter. Retrospectively, it was naïve of us to think that we would be. As we end the project 10 years later, our views are completely at odds with what we believed at the outset, as well as what passes for conventional wisdom about what took place.
We worked for both the prosecution and the defense at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, trying to perform the same task — that is, to find data that demonstrate what actually happened during the 100 days of killing. Because of our findings, we have been threatened by members of the Rwandan government and individuals around the world. And we have been labeled "genocide deniers" in both the popular press as well as the Tutsi expatriate community because we refused to say that the only form of political violence that took place in 1994 was genocide. It was not, and understanding what happened is crucial if the international community is to respond properly the next time it becomes aware of such a horrific spasm of mass violence.
Like most people with an unsophisticated understanding of Rwandan history and politics, we began our research believing that what we were dealing with was one of the most straight-forward cases of political violence in recent times, and it came in two forms: On the one hand was the much-highlighted genocide, in which the dominant, ruling ethnic group — the Hutu— targeted the minority ethnic group known as the Tutsi. The behavior toward the minority group was extremely violent — taking place all over Rwanda — and the objective of the government's effort appeared to be the eradication of the Tutsi, so the genocide label was easy to apply. On the other hand, there was the much-neglected international or civil war, which had rebels (the Rwandan Patriotic Front or RPF) invading from Uganda on one side and the Rwandan government (the Armed Forces of Rwanda or FAR) on the other. They fought this war for four years, until the RPF took control of the country.
We also went in believing that the Western community — especially the United States — had dropped the ball in failing to intervene, in large part because the West had failed to classify expeditiously the relevant events as genocide.
Finally, we went in believing that the Rwandan Patriotic Front, then rebels but now the ruling party in Rwanda, had stopped the genocide by ending the civil war and taking control of the country.
At the time, the points identified above stood as the conventional wisdom about the 100 days of slaughter. But the conventional wisdom was only partly correct.
The violence did seem to begin with Hutu extremists, including militia groups such as the Interahamwe, who focused their efforts against the Tutsi. But as our data came to reveal, from there violence spread quickly, with Hutu and Tutsi playing the roles of both attackers and victims, and many people of both ethnic backgrounds systematically using the mass killing to settle political, economic and personal scores.
Against conventional wisdom, we came to believe that the victims of this violence were fairly evenly distributed between Tutsi and Hutu; among other things, it appears that there simply weren't enough Tutsi in Rwanda at the time to account for all the reported deaths.
We also came to understand just how uncomfortable it can be to question conventional wisdom.
We began our research while working on a U.S. Agency for International Development project that had proposed to deliver some methodological training to Rwandan students completing their graduate theses in the social sciences. While engaged in this effort, we came across a wide variety of nongovernmental organizations that had compiled information about the 100 days. Many of these organizations had records that were detailed, identifying precisely who died where and under what circumstances; the records included information about who had been attacked by whom. The harder we pushed the question of what had happened and who was responsible, the more access we gained to information and data.
There were a number of reasons that we were given wide-ranging access to groups that had data on the 100 days of killing. First, for their part of the USAID program, our hosts at the National University of Rwanda in Butare arranged many public talks, one of which took place at the U.S. embassy in Kigali. Presumably put together to assist Rwandan NGOs with "state-of-the-art" measurement of human rights violations, these talks — the embassy talk, in particular — turned the situation on its head. The Rwandans at the embassy ended up doing the teaching, bringing up any number of events and publications that dealt with the violence. We met with representatives of several of the institutions involved, whose members discussed with us in greater detail the data they had compiled.
Second, the U.S. ambassador at the time, George McDade Staples, helped us gain access to Rwanda government elites —directly and indirectly through staff members.
Third, the Rwandan assigned to assist the USAID project was extremely helpful in identifying potential sources of information. That she was closely related to a member of the former Tutsi royal family was a welcome plus.
Once we returned to the U.S., we began to code events during the 100 days by times, places, perpetrators, victims, weapon type and actions. Essentially, we compiled a listing of who did what to whom, and when and where they did it — what Charles Tilly, the late political sociologist, called an "event catalog." This catalog would allow us to identify patterns and conduct more rigorous statistical investigations.
Looking at the material across space and time, it became apparent that not all of Rwanda was engulfed in violence at the same time. Rather, the violence spread from one locale to another, and there seemed to be a definite sequence to the spread. But we didn't understand the sequence.
At National University of Rwanda, we spent a week preparing students to conduct a household survey of the province. As we taught the students how to design a survey instrument, a common question came up repeatedly: "What actually happened in Butare during the summer of 1994?" No one seemed to know; we found this lack of awareness puzzling and guided the students in building a set of questions for their survey, which eventually revealed several interesting pieces of information.
First, and perhaps most important, was confirmation that the vast majority of the population in the Butare province had been on the move between 1993 and 1995, particularly during early 1994. Almost no one stayed put. We also found that the RPF rebels had blocked the border leading south out of the province to Burundi. The numbers of households that provided information consistent with these facts raised significant questions in our minds regarding the culpability of the RPF relative to the FAR for killing in the area.
During this period, we confirmed Human Rights Watch findings that many killings were organized by the Hutu-led FAR, but we also found that many of the killings were spontaneous, the type of violence that we would expect with a complete breakdown of civil order. Our work further revealed that, some nine years later, a great deal of hostility remained. There was little communication between the two ethnic groups. The Tutsi, now under RPF leadership and President Paul Kagame, dominated all aspects of the political, economic, and social systems.
Lastly, it became apparent to us that members of the Tutsi diaspora who returned to Rwanda after the conflict were woefully out of touch with the country that they had returned to. Indeed, one Tutsi woman with whom we spent a day in the hills around Butare broke down in tears in our car as we drove back to the university. When asked why, she replied, "I have never seen such poverty and destitution." We were quite surprised at the degree of disconnect between the elite students drawn from the wealthy strata of the Tutsi diaspora, who were largely English-speaking, and the poorer Rwandans, who spoke Kinyarwanda and perhaps a bit of French. It was not surprising that the poor and the wealthy in the country did not mix; what struck both of us as surprising was the utter lack of empathy and knowledge about each other's condition. After all, the Tutsi outside the country claimed to have invaded Rwanda from Uganda on behalf of the Tutsi inside — a group that the former seemed to have little awareness of or interest in. Our work has led us to conclude that the invading force had a primary goal of conquest and little regard for the lives of resident Tutsis.
As the students proceeded with the survey, asking questions that were politically awkward for the RPF-led government, we found our position in the country increasingly untenable. One member of our team was detained and held for the better part of a day while being interrogated by a district police chief. The putative reason was a lack of permissions from the local authorities; permissions were required for everything in Rwanda, and we generally had few problems obtaining them in the beginning. The real reason for the interrogation, however, seemed to be that we were asking uncomfortable questions about who the killers were.
A couple of weeks later, two members of our team were on a tourist trip in the northern part of the country when they were again detained and questioned for the better part of a day at an RPF military facility. There the questioners wanted to know why we were asking difficult questions, what we were doing in the country, whether we were working for the American CIA, if we were guests of the Europeans and, in general, why we were trying to cause trouble.
On one of our trips to Rwanda, Alison Des Forges, the pre-eminent scholar of Rwandan politics who has since died in an airplane crash, suggested that we go to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania to seek answers to the questions we were raising. Des Forges even called on our behalf.
With appointments set and with Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance, we arrived in Arusha, Tanzania, for our meeting with Donald Webster, the lead prosecutor for the political trials, Barbara Mulvaney, the lead prosecutor for the military trial, and others from their respective teams. As we began to talk, we initially found that the prosecutors in the two sets of cases — one set of defendants were former members of the FAR military, the other set of trials focused on the members of the Hutu political machine — had great interest in our project.
Eventually, Webster and Mulvaney asked us to help them contextualize the cases that they were investigating. Needless to say, we were thrilled with the possibility. Now, we were working directly with those trying to bring about justice.
The prosecutors showed us a preliminary database that they had compiled from thousands of eyewitness statements associated with the 1994 violence. They did not have the resources to code all of the statements for computer analysis; they wanted us to do the coding and compare the statements against the data we had already compiled. We returned to the U.S. with real enthusiasm; we had access to data that no one else had seen and direct interaction with one of the most important legal bodies of the era.
Interest by and cooperation with the ICTR did not last as long as we thought it would, in no small part because it quickly became clear that our research was going to uncover killings committed not just by the Hutu-led former government, or FAR, but by the Tutsi-led rebel force, the RPF, as well. Until then, we had been trying to identify all deaths that had taken place; beyond confidentiality issues, it did not occur to us that the identity of perpetrators would be problematic (in part because we thought that all or almost all of them would be associated with the Hutu government). But then we tried to obtain detailed maps that contained information on the location of FAR military bases at the beginning of the civil war. We had seen copies of these maps pinned to the wall in Mulvaney's office. In fact, during our interview with Mulvaney, the prosecutor explained how her office had used these maps. We took detailed notes, even going so far as to write down map grid coordinates and important map grid sheet identifiers.
After the prosecution indicated it was no longer interested in reconstructing a broad conception of what had taken place —prosecutors said they'd changed their legal strategy to focus exclusively on information directly related to people charged with crimes — we asked the court for a copy of the maps. To our great dismay, the prosecution claimed that the maps did not exist. Unfortunately for the prosecutors, we had our notes. After two years of negotiations, a sympathetic Canadian colonel in a Canadian mapping agency produced the maps we requested.
As part of the process of trying to work out the culpability of the various defendants charged with planning to carry out genocidal policies, the ICTR conducted interviews with witnesses to the violence over some five years, beginning in 1996. Ultimately, the court deposed some 12,000 different people. The witness statements represent a highly biased sample; the Kagame administration prevented ICTR investigators from interviewing many who might provide information implicating members of the RPF or who were otherwise deemed by the government to be either unimportant or a threat to the regime.
All the same, the witness statements were important to our project; they could help corroborate information found in CIA documents, other witness statements, academic studies of the violence and other authoritative sources.
As with the maps, however, when we asked for the statements, we were told they did not exist. Eventually, defense attorneys —who were surprised by the statements' existence, there being no formal discovery process in the ICTR — requested them. After a year or so, we obtained the witness statements, in the form of computer image files that we converted into optically readable computer documents. We then wrote software to search through these 12,000 statements in our attempts to locate violence and killing throughout Rwanda.
The first significant negative publicity associated with our project occurred in November 2003 at an academic conference in Kigali. The National University of Rwanda had invited a select group of academics, including our team, to present the results of research into the 1994 murders. We had been led to believe that the conference would be a private affair, with an audience composed of academics and a small number of policymakers.
As it turned out, the conference was anything but small or private. It was held at a municipal facility in downtown Kigali, and our remarks would be simultaneously translated from English into French and the Rwandan language, Kinyarwanda. There were hundreds of people present, including not just academics but members of the military, the cabinet and other members of the business and political elite.
We presented two main findings, the first derived from spatial and temporal maps of data obtained from the different sources already mentioned. The maps showed that, while killing took place in different parts of the country, it did so at different rates and magnitudes — begging for an explanation we did not yet have. The second finding came out of a comparison of official census data from 1991 to the violence data we had collected. According to the census, there were approximately 600,000 Tutsi in the country in 1991; according to the survival organization Ibuka, about 300,000 survived the 1994 slaughter. This suggested that out of the 800,000 to 1 million believed to have been killed then, more than half were Hutu. The finding was significant; it suggested that the majority of the victims of 1994 were of the same ethnicity as the government in power. It also suggested that genocide — that is, a government's attempts to exterminate an ethnic group — was hardly the only motive for some, and perhaps most, of the killing that occurred in the 100 days of 1994.
The accepted story of the mass killings of 1994 is incomplete. The full truth — inconvenient as it may be to the Rwandan government — needs to come out.
Halfway into our presentation, a military man in a green uniform stood up and interrupted. The Minister of Internal Affairs, he announced, took great exception to our findings. We were told that our passport numbers had been documented, that we were expected to leave the country the next day and that we would not be welcomed back into Rwanda — ever. Abruptly, our presentation was over, as was, it seemed, our fieldwork in Rwanda.
The results of our initial paper and media interviews became widely known throughout the community of those who study genocides in general and the Rwandan genocide in particular. The main offshoot was that we became labeled, paradoxically, as genocide "deniers," even though our research documents that genocide had occurred. Both of us have received significant quantities of hate mail and hostile e-mail. In the Tutsi community and diaspora, our work is anathema. Over the past several years, as we have refined our results, becoming more confident about our findings, our critics' voices have become louder and increasingly strident.
Of course, we have never denied that a genocide took place; we just noted that genocide was only one among several forms of violence that occured at the time. In the context of post-genocide Rwandan politics, however, the divergence from common wisdom was considered political heresy.
Following the debacle at the Kigali conference, the ICTR prosecution teams of Webster and Mulvaney let us know in no uncertain terms that they had no further use of our services. The reasons for our dismissal struck us as somewhat outrageous. From the outset, the prosecution claimed it was not interested in anything that would prove or disprove the culpability of any individuals in the mass killings. Now, they said, the findings we'd announced in the Kigali conference made our future efforts superfluous.
Shortly after our dismissal, however, Peter Erlinder, a defense attorney for former members of the FAR military who were to be tried, contacted us. This was after several others from the defense had also attempted to contact us, with no success.
We had misgivings about cooperating or working with the defense, the gravest being that such work might be seen as supporting the claim we were genocide deniers. After months of negotiating, we finally met Erlinder at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, Pa. The defense could have made a better choice for roping us in. Erlinder, a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law, was an academic turned defender for the least likable suspects.
After we obtained lattes and quiet seats in the back of the coffee shop, Erlinder came straight to the point: He was, of course, interested in establishing his client's innocence, but he felt it would help the defense to establish a baseline history of what had taken place in the war in 1994. As he explained, "My client may be guilty of some things, but he is not guilty of all the things that any in the Rwandan government and military during 1994 is accused of. They have all been made out to be devils."
What he asked was reasonable. In fact, he made the same essential offer the prosecution had: In exchange for our efforts at contextualizing the events of 1994, Erlinder would do the best he could to assist us in getting data on what took place. With Erlinder's assistance, we were able to obtain the maps we'd seen in Mulvaney's office and the 12,000 witness statements. With this information, we were able to better establish the true positions of both the FAR and RPF during the civil war. This greater confidence of the location of the two sides' militaries made — and makes — us more certain about the culpability of the FAR for the majority of the killings during the 100 days of 1994. At the same time, however, we also began to develop a stronger understanding of the not insignificant role played by the RPF in the mass murders.
About this time, we were approached by an individual associated withArcview-GIS, a spatial mapping software firm that wanted to take the rather simplistic maps that we had developed and improve them, thereby showing what the company's program was capable of. Our consultant at Arcview-GIS said the software could layer information on the map, providing, among other things, a line that showed, day by day, where the battlefront of the civil war was located, relative to the killings we had already documented.
This was a major step. In line with the conventional wisdom, we had assumed that the government was responsible for most all of the people killed in Rwanda during 1994; we initially paid no attention to where RPF forces were located. But it soon became clear that the killings occurred not just in territory controlled by the government's FAR but also in RPF-captured territory, as well as along the front between the two forces. It seemed possible to us that the three zones of engagement (the FAR-controlled area, the RPF-controlled area and the battlefront between the two) somehow influenced one another.
In his book, The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, Alan Kuperman argued that given the logistical challenges of mounting a military operation in deep central Africa, there was little the U.S. or Europe could have done to limit the 1994 killings. To support his position, Kuperman used U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency information to document approximate positions of the RPF units over the course of the war. We updated this information on troop locations with data from CIA national intelligence estimates that others had obtained through theFreedom of Information Act and then updated it again, incorporating interviews with former RPF members, whose recollections we corroborated with information from the FAR.
Our research showed the vast majority of the 1994 killing had been conducted by the FAR, the Interahamwe and their associates. Another significant proportion of the killing was committed not by government forces but by citizens engaged in opportunistic killing as part of the breakdown of civil order associated with the civil war. But the RPF was clearly responsible for another significant portion of the killings.
In some instances, the RPF killings were, very likely, spontaneous retribution. In other cases, though, the RPF has been directly implicated in large-scale killings associated with refugee camps, as well as individual households. Large numbers of individuals died at roadblocks and in municipal centers, households, swamps and fields, many of them trying to make their way to borders.
Perhaps the most shocking result of our combination of information on troop locations involved the invasion itself: The killings in the zone controlled by the FAR seemed to escalate as the RPF moved into the country and acquired more territory. When the RPF advanced, large-scale killings escalated. When the RPF stopped, large-scale killings largely decreased. The data revealed in our maps was consistent with FAR claims that it would have stopped much of the killing if the RPF had simply called a halt to its invasion. This conclusion runs counter to the Kagame administration's claims that the RPF continued its invasion to bring a halt to the killings.
In terms of ethnicity, the short answer to the question, "Who died?" is, "We'll probably never know." By and large, the Hutu and the Tutsi are physically indistinct from one another. They share a common language. They have no identifiable accent. They have had significant levels of intermarriage through their histories, and they have lived in similar locations for the past several hundred years. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Belgians, in their role as occupying power, put together a national program to try to identify individuals' ethnic identity through phrenology, an abortive attempt to create an ethnicity scale based on measurable physical features such as height, nose width and weight, with the hope that colonial administrators would not have to rely on identity cards.
One result of the Belgian efforts was to show — convincingly — that there is no observable difference on average between the typical Hutu Rwandan and the typical Tutsi Rwandan. Some clans — such as those of the current president, Paul Kagame, or the earlier Hutu president,Juvenal Habyarimana — do share distinctive physical traits. But the typical Rwandan shares a mix of such archetypal traits, making ethnic identity outside of local knowledge about an individual household's identity difficult if not impossible to ascertain — especially in mass graves containing no identifying information. (For example, Physicians for Human Rights exhumed a mass grave in western Rwanda and found the remains of more than 450 people, but only six identity cards.)
In court transcripts for multiple trials at the ICTR, witnesses described surviving the killings that took place around them by simply hiding among members of the opposite ethnic group. It is clear that in 1994, killers would have had a difficult time ascertaining the ethnic identity of their putative victims, unless they were targeting neighbors.
Complicating matters is the displacement that accompanied the RPF invasion. During 1994, some 2 million Rwandan citizens became external refugees, 1 million to 2 million became internal refugees, and about 1 million eventually became victims of civil war and genocide.
Ethnic identity in Rwanda is local knowledge, in much the same way that caste is local knowledge in India. With the majority of the population on the move, local knowledge and ethnic identity disappeared. This is not to say that the indigenous Tutsi were not sought out deliberately for extermination. But in their killing rampages, FAR, the Interahamwe and private citizens engaged in killing victims of both ethnic groups. And people from both ethnic groups were on the move, trying to stay out in front of the fighting as the RPF advanced.
In the end, our best estimate of who died during the 1994 massacre was, really, an educated guess based on an estimate of the number of Tutsi in the country at the outset of the war and the number who survived the war. Using a simple method —subtracting the survivors from the number of Tutsi residents at the outset of the violence — we arrived at an estimated total of somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 Tutsi victims. If we believe the estimate of close to 1 million total civilian deaths in the war and genocide, we are then left with between 500,000 and 700,000 Hutu deaths, and a best guess that the majority of victims were in fact Hutu, not Tutsi.
This conclusion — which has drawn criticism from the Kagame regime and its supporters — is buttressed by the maps that we painstakingly constructed from the best available data and that show significant numbers of people killed in areas under control of the Tutsi-led RPF.
One fact is now becoming increasingly well understood: During the genocide and civil war that took place in Rwanda in 1994, multiple processes of violence took place simultaneously. Clearly there was a genocidal campaign, directed to some degree by the Hutu government, resulting directly in the deaths of some 100,000 or more Tutsi. At the same time, a civil war raged — a war that began in 1990, if the focus is on only the most recent and intense violence, but had roots that extend all the way back to the 1950s. Clearly, there was also random, wanton violence associated with the breakdown of order during the civil war. There's also no question that large-scale retribution killings took place throughout the country — retribution killings by Hutu of Tutsi, and vice versa.
From the beginning, the ICTR's investigation into the mass killings and crimes against humanity in Rwanda in 1994 has focused myopically on the culpability of Hutu leaders and other presumed participants. The Kagame administration has worked assiduously to prevent any investigation into RPF culpability for either mass killings or the random violence associated with the civil war. By raising the possibility that in addition to Hutu/FAR wrongdoing, the RPF was involved, either directly or indirectly, in many deaths, we became in effect persona non grata in Rwanda and at the ICTR.
The most commonly invoked metaphor for the 1994 Rwandan violence is the Holocaust. Elsewhere, we have suggested that perhaps theEnglish civil war, the Greek civil war, the Chinese civil war or the Russian civil war might be more apt comparisons because they all involved some combination of ethnic-based violence and the random slaughter and retribution that can occur when civil society breaks down altogether.
Actually, though, it is difficult to make authoritative comparisons when it remains unclear exactly what happened in the Rwandan civil war and genocide.
Contemporary observers — including Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the ineffective U.N. peacekeeping force for Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 — claim that much of the genocidal killing had been planned by the Hutu government as early as two years in advance of the actual RPF invasion. Unfortunately, we have not been able to gain access to the individuals who have information on that score to either corroborate or to refute the hypothesis. The reason? Convicted genocidaires who have been implicated in the planning of the slaughter now reside out of contact with potential interviewers in a U.N.-sponsored prison in Mali.
We wanted to put questions to these planners, specifically to ask them what their goals were. Was the genocide plan an attempt at deterrence, an effort that the FAR leadership thought might keep the RPF at bay in Uganda and elsewhere? Did the FAR government actually hope for war, believing — incorrectly as it turned out — that it would win? Was the scale of the killing beyond its expectations? If so, why do FAR leaders believe events spun so badly out of control, compared to previous spasms of violence in the 1960s, '70s and '80s?
Unfortunately, the U.N. prosecutors in Tanzania told us they could not arrange a meeting with the convicted planners and killers, but we were free to go to Mali on our own. We were told we would probably get in to see the prisoners, but the prison is in the middle of nowhere, in a country where we had no contacts. We had to let go.
Even without access to convicted genocidaires, we continued to piece together what had happened in 1994 with the help of a grant from theNational Science Foundation. The grant allowed us to be more ambitious in our pursuit of diverse informants who started popping up all over the globe, to refine our mapping and to explore alternative ways of generating estimates about what had taken place. While our understanding has advanced a great deal since our first days in Kigali, it is hard not to see irony in a current reality: Some of the most important information about what occurred in Rwanda in 1994 has been sent — by the very authorities responsible for investigating the violence and preventing its recurrence, in Rwanda and elsewhere — to an isolated prison, where it sits unexamined, like some artifact in the final scene of an Indiana Jones movie.
October 06, 2009
In 1998 and 1999, we went to Rwanda and returned several times in subsequent years for a simple reason: We wanted to discover what had happened there during the 100 days in 1994. What was the source of our curiosity? Well, our motivations were complex. In part, we felt guilty about ignoring the events when they took place and were largely overshadowed in the U.S. by such "news" as the O.J. Simpson murder case. We felt that at least we could do something to clarify what had occurred in an effort to respect the dead and assist in preventing this kind of mass atrocity in the future. We were both also in need of something new, professionally speaking. Although tenured, our research agendas felt staid. Rwanda was a way out of the rut and into something significant.
Although well-intentioned, we were not at all ready for what we would encounter. Retrospectively, it was naïve of us to think that we would be. As we end the project 10 years later, our views are completely at odds with what we believed at the outset, as well as what passes for conventional wisdom about what took place.
We worked for both the prosecution and the defense at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, trying to perform the same task — that is, to find data that demonstrate what actually happened during the 100 days of killing. Because of our findings, we have been threatened by members of the Rwandan government and individuals around the world. And we have been labeled "genocide deniers" in both the popular press as well as the Tutsi expatriate community because we refused to say that the only form of political violence that took place in 1994 was genocide. It was not, and understanding what happened is crucial if the international community is to respond properly the next time it becomes aware of such a horrific spasm of mass violence.
Like most people with an unsophisticated understanding of Rwandan history and politics, we began our research believing that what we were dealing with was one of the most straight-forward cases of political violence in recent times, and it came in two forms: On the one hand was the much-highlighted genocide, in which the dominant, ruling ethnic group — the Hutu— targeted the minority ethnic group known as the Tutsi. The behavior toward the minority group was extremely violent — taking place all over Rwanda — and the objective of the government's effort appeared to be the eradication of the Tutsi, so the genocide label was easy to apply. On the other hand, there was the much-neglected international or civil war, which had rebels (the Rwandan Patriotic Front or RPF) invading from Uganda on one side and the Rwandan government (the Armed Forces of Rwanda or FAR) on the other. They fought this war for four years, until the RPF took control of the country.
We also went in believing that the Western community — especially the United States — had dropped the ball in failing to intervene, in large part because the West had failed to classify expeditiously the relevant events as genocide.
Finally, we went in believing that the Rwandan Patriotic Front, then rebels but now the ruling party in Rwanda, had stopped the genocide by ending the civil war and taking control of the country.
At the time, the points identified above stood as the conventional wisdom about the 100 days of slaughter. But the conventional wisdom was only partly correct.
The violence did seem to begin with Hutu extremists, including militia groups such as the Interahamwe, who focused their efforts against the Tutsi. But as our data came to reveal, from there violence spread quickly, with Hutu and Tutsi playing the roles of both attackers and victims, and many people of both ethnic backgrounds systematically using the mass killing to settle political, economic and personal scores.
Against conventional wisdom, we came to believe that the victims of this violence were fairly evenly distributed between Tutsi and Hutu; among other things, it appears that there simply weren't enough Tutsi in Rwanda at the time to account for all the reported deaths.
We also came to understand just how uncomfortable it can be to question conventional wisdom.
We began our research while working on a U.S. Agency for International Development project that had proposed to deliver some methodological training to Rwandan students completing their graduate theses in the social sciences. While engaged in this effort, we came across a wide variety of nongovernmental organizations that had compiled information about the 100 days. Many of these organizations had records that were detailed, identifying precisely who died where and under what circumstances; the records included information about who had been attacked by whom. The harder we pushed the question of what had happened and who was responsible, the more access we gained to information and data.
There were a number of reasons that we were given wide-ranging access to groups that had data on the 100 days of killing. First, for their part of the USAID program, our hosts at the National University of Rwanda in Butare arranged many public talks, one of which took place at the U.S. embassy in Kigali. Presumably put together to assist Rwandan NGOs with "state-of-the-art" measurement of human rights violations, these talks — the embassy talk, in particular — turned the situation on its head. The Rwandans at the embassy ended up doing the teaching, bringing up any number of events and publications that dealt with the violence. We met with representatives of several of the institutions involved, whose members discussed with us in greater detail the data they had compiled.
Second, the U.S. ambassador at the time, George McDade Staples, helped us gain access to Rwanda government elites —directly and indirectly through staff members.
Third, the Rwandan assigned to assist the USAID project was extremely helpful in identifying potential sources of information. That she was closely related to a member of the former Tutsi royal family was a welcome plus.
Once we returned to the U.S., we began to code events during the 100 days by times, places, perpetrators, victims, weapon type and actions. Essentially, we compiled a listing of who did what to whom, and when and where they did it — what Charles Tilly, the late political sociologist, called an "event catalog." This catalog would allow us to identify patterns and conduct more rigorous statistical investigations.
Looking at the material across space and time, it became apparent that not all of Rwanda was engulfed in violence at the same time. Rather, the violence spread from one locale to another, and there seemed to be a definite sequence to the spread. But we didn't understand the sequence.
At National University of Rwanda, we spent a week preparing students to conduct a household survey of the province. As we taught the students how to design a survey instrument, a common question came up repeatedly: "What actually happened in Butare during the summer of 1994?" No one seemed to know; we found this lack of awareness puzzling and guided the students in building a set of questions for their survey, which eventually revealed several interesting pieces of information.
First, and perhaps most important, was confirmation that the vast majority of the population in the Butare province had been on the move between 1993 and 1995, particularly during early 1994. Almost no one stayed put. We also found that the RPF rebels had blocked the border leading south out of the province to Burundi. The numbers of households that provided information consistent with these facts raised significant questions in our minds regarding the culpability of the RPF relative to the FAR for killing in the area.
During this period, we confirmed Human Rights Watch findings that many killings were organized by the Hutu-led FAR, but we also found that many of the killings were spontaneous, the type of violence that we would expect with a complete breakdown of civil order. Our work further revealed that, some nine years later, a great deal of hostility remained. There was little communication between the two ethnic groups. The Tutsi, now under RPF leadership and President Paul Kagame, dominated all aspects of the political, economic, and social systems.
Lastly, it became apparent to us that members of the Tutsi diaspora who returned to Rwanda after the conflict were woefully out of touch with the country that they had returned to. Indeed, one Tutsi woman with whom we spent a day in the hills around Butare broke down in tears in our car as we drove back to the university. When asked why, she replied, "I have never seen such poverty and destitution." We were quite surprised at the degree of disconnect between the elite students drawn from the wealthy strata of the Tutsi diaspora, who were largely English-speaking, and the poorer Rwandans, who spoke Kinyarwanda and perhaps a bit of French. It was not surprising that the poor and the wealthy in the country did not mix; what struck both of us as surprising was the utter lack of empathy and knowledge about each other's condition. After all, the Tutsi outside the country claimed to have invaded Rwanda from Uganda on behalf of the Tutsi inside — a group that the former seemed to have little awareness of or interest in. Our work has led us to conclude that the invading force had a primary goal of conquest and little regard for the lives of resident Tutsis.
As the students proceeded with the survey, asking questions that were politically awkward for the RPF-led government, we found our position in the country increasingly untenable. One member of our team was detained and held for the better part of a day while being interrogated by a district police chief. The putative reason was a lack of permissions from the local authorities; permissions were required for everything in Rwanda, and we generally had few problems obtaining them in the beginning. The real reason for the interrogation, however, seemed to be that we were asking uncomfortable questions about who the killers were.
A couple of weeks later, two members of our team were on a tourist trip in the northern part of the country when they were again detained and questioned for the better part of a day at an RPF military facility. There the questioners wanted to know why we were asking difficult questions, what we were doing in the country, whether we were working for the American CIA, if we were guests of the Europeans and, in general, why we were trying to cause trouble.
On one of our trips to Rwanda, Alison Des Forges, the pre-eminent scholar of Rwandan politics who has since died in an airplane crash, suggested that we go to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in Tanzania to seek answers to the questions we were raising. Des Forges even called on our behalf.
With appointments set and with Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance, we arrived in Arusha, Tanzania, for our meeting with Donald Webster, the lead prosecutor for the political trials, Barbara Mulvaney, the lead prosecutor for the military trial, and others from their respective teams. As we began to talk, we initially found that the prosecutors in the two sets of cases — one set of defendants were former members of the FAR military, the other set of trials focused on the members of the Hutu political machine — had great interest in our project.
Eventually, Webster and Mulvaney asked us to help them contextualize the cases that they were investigating. Needless to say, we were thrilled with the possibility. Now, we were working directly with those trying to bring about justice.
The prosecutors showed us a preliminary database that they had compiled from thousands of eyewitness statements associated with the 1994 violence. They did not have the resources to code all of the statements for computer analysis; they wanted us to do the coding and compare the statements against the data we had already compiled. We returned to the U.S. with real enthusiasm; we had access to data that no one else had seen and direct interaction with one of the most important legal bodies of the era.
Interest by and cooperation with the ICTR did not last as long as we thought it would, in no small part because it quickly became clear that our research was going to uncover killings committed not just by the Hutu-led former government, or FAR, but by the Tutsi-led rebel force, the RPF, as well. Until then, we had been trying to identify all deaths that had taken place; beyond confidentiality issues, it did not occur to us that the identity of perpetrators would be problematic (in part because we thought that all or almost all of them would be associated with the Hutu government). But then we tried to obtain detailed maps that contained information on the location of FAR military bases at the beginning of the civil war. We had seen copies of these maps pinned to the wall in Mulvaney's office. In fact, during our interview with Mulvaney, the prosecutor explained how her office had used these maps. We took detailed notes, even going so far as to write down map grid coordinates and important map grid sheet identifiers.
After the prosecution indicated it was no longer interested in reconstructing a broad conception of what had taken place —prosecutors said they'd changed their legal strategy to focus exclusively on information directly related to people charged with crimes — we asked the court for a copy of the maps. To our great dismay, the prosecution claimed that the maps did not exist. Unfortunately for the prosecutors, we had our notes. After two years of negotiations, a sympathetic Canadian colonel in a Canadian mapping agency produced the maps we requested.
As part of the process of trying to work out the culpability of the various defendants charged with planning to carry out genocidal policies, the ICTR conducted interviews with witnesses to the violence over some five years, beginning in 1996. Ultimately, the court deposed some 12,000 different people. The witness statements represent a highly biased sample; the Kagame administration prevented ICTR investigators from interviewing many who might provide information implicating members of the RPF or who were otherwise deemed by the government to be either unimportant or a threat to the regime.
All the same, the witness statements were important to our project; they could help corroborate information found in CIA documents, other witness statements, academic studies of the violence and other authoritative sources.
As with the maps, however, when we asked for the statements, we were told they did not exist. Eventually, defense attorneys —who were surprised by the statements' existence, there being no formal discovery process in the ICTR — requested them. After a year or so, we obtained the witness statements, in the form of computer image files that we converted into optically readable computer documents. We then wrote software to search through these 12,000 statements in our attempts to locate violence and killing throughout Rwanda.
The first significant negative publicity associated with our project occurred in November 2003 at an academic conference in Kigali. The National University of Rwanda had invited a select group of academics, including our team, to present the results of research into the 1994 murders. We had been led to believe that the conference would be a private affair, with an audience composed of academics and a small number of policymakers.
As it turned out, the conference was anything but small or private. It was held at a municipal facility in downtown Kigali, and our remarks would be simultaneously translated from English into French and the Rwandan language, Kinyarwanda. There were hundreds of people present, including not just academics but members of the military, the cabinet and other members of the business and political elite.
We presented two main findings, the first derived from spatial and temporal maps of data obtained from the different sources already mentioned. The maps showed that, while killing took place in different parts of the country, it did so at different rates and magnitudes — begging for an explanation we did not yet have. The second finding came out of a comparison of official census data from 1991 to the violence data we had collected. According to the census, there were approximately 600,000 Tutsi in the country in 1991; according to the survival organization Ibuka, about 300,000 survived the 1994 slaughter. This suggested that out of the 800,000 to 1 million believed to have been killed then, more than half were Hutu. The finding was significant; it suggested that the majority of the victims of 1994 were of the same ethnicity as the government in power. It also suggested that genocide — that is, a government's attempts to exterminate an ethnic group — was hardly the only motive for some, and perhaps most, of the killing that occurred in the 100 days of 1994.
The accepted story of the mass killings of 1994 is incomplete. The full truth — inconvenient as it may be to the Rwandan government — needs to come out.
Halfway into our presentation, a military man in a green uniform stood up and interrupted. The Minister of Internal Affairs, he announced, took great exception to our findings. We were told that our passport numbers had been documented, that we were expected to leave the country the next day and that we would not be welcomed back into Rwanda — ever. Abruptly, our presentation was over, as was, it seemed, our fieldwork in Rwanda.
The results of our initial paper and media interviews became widely known throughout the community of those who study genocides in general and the Rwandan genocide in particular. The main offshoot was that we became labeled, paradoxically, as genocide "deniers," even though our research documents that genocide had occurred. Both of us have received significant quantities of hate mail and hostile e-mail. In the Tutsi community and diaspora, our work is anathema. Over the past several years, as we have refined our results, becoming more confident about our findings, our critics' voices have become louder and increasingly strident.
Of course, we have never denied that a genocide took place; we just noted that genocide was only one among several forms of violence that occured at the time. In the context of post-genocide Rwandan politics, however, the divergence from common wisdom was considered political heresy.
Following the debacle at the Kigali conference, the ICTR prosecution teams of Webster and Mulvaney let us know in no uncertain terms that they had no further use of our services. The reasons for our dismissal struck us as somewhat outrageous. From the outset, the prosecution claimed it was not interested in anything that would prove or disprove the culpability of any individuals in the mass killings. Now, they said, the findings we'd announced in the Kigali conference made our future efforts superfluous.
Shortly after our dismissal, however, Peter Erlinder, a defense attorney for former members of the FAR military who were to be tried, contacted us. This was after several others from the defense had also attempted to contact us, with no success.
We had misgivings about cooperating or working with the defense, the gravest being that such work might be seen as supporting the claim we were genocide deniers. After months of negotiating, we finally met Erlinder at a Starbucks in Philadelphia, Pa. The defense could have made a better choice for roping us in. Erlinder, a professor at the William Mitchell College of Law, was an academic turned defender for the least likable suspects.
After we obtained lattes and quiet seats in the back of the coffee shop, Erlinder came straight to the point: He was, of course, interested in establishing his client's innocence, but he felt it would help the defense to establish a baseline history of what had taken place in the war in 1994. As he explained, "My client may be guilty of some things, but he is not guilty of all the things that any in the Rwandan government and military during 1994 is accused of. They have all been made out to be devils."
What he asked was reasonable. In fact, he made the same essential offer the prosecution had: In exchange for our efforts at contextualizing the events of 1994, Erlinder would do the best he could to assist us in getting data on what took place. With Erlinder's assistance, we were able to obtain the maps we'd seen in Mulvaney's office and the 12,000 witness statements. With this information, we were able to better establish the true positions of both the FAR and RPF during the civil war. This greater confidence of the location of the two sides' militaries made — and makes — us more certain about the culpability of the FAR for the majority of the killings during the 100 days of 1994. At the same time, however, we also began to develop a stronger understanding of the not insignificant role played by the RPF in the mass murders.
About this time, we were approached by an individual associated withArcview-GIS, a spatial mapping software firm that wanted to take the rather simplistic maps that we had developed and improve them, thereby showing what the company's program was capable of. Our consultant at Arcview-GIS said the software could layer information on the map, providing, among other things, a line that showed, day by day, where the battlefront of the civil war was located, relative to the killings we had already documented.
This was a major step. In line with the conventional wisdom, we had assumed that the government was responsible for most all of the people killed in Rwanda during 1994; we initially paid no attention to where RPF forces were located. But it soon became clear that the killings occurred not just in territory controlled by the government's FAR but also in RPF-captured territory, as well as along the front between the two forces. It seemed possible to us that the three zones of engagement (the FAR-controlled area, the RPF-controlled area and the battlefront between the two) somehow influenced one another.
In his book, The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention, Alan Kuperman argued that given the logistical challenges of mounting a military operation in deep central Africa, there was little the U.S. or Europe could have done to limit the 1994 killings. To support his position, Kuperman used U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency information to document approximate positions of the RPF units over the course of the war. We updated this information on troop locations with data from CIA national intelligence estimates that others had obtained through theFreedom of Information Act and then updated it again, incorporating interviews with former RPF members, whose recollections we corroborated with information from the FAR.
Our research showed the vast majority of the 1994 killing had been conducted by the FAR, the Interahamwe and their associates. Another significant proportion of the killing was committed not by government forces but by citizens engaged in opportunistic killing as part of the breakdown of civil order associated with the civil war. But the RPF was clearly responsible for another significant portion of the killings.
In some instances, the RPF killings were, very likely, spontaneous retribution. In other cases, though, the RPF has been directly implicated in large-scale killings associated with refugee camps, as well as individual households. Large numbers of individuals died at roadblocks and in municipal centers, households, swamps and fields, many of them trying to make their way to borders.
Perhaps the most shocking result of our combination of information on troop locations involved the invasion itself: The killings in the zone controlled by the FAR seemed to escalate as the RPF moved into the country and acquired more territory. When the RPF advanced, large-scale killings escalated. When the RPF stopped, large-scale killings largely decreased. The data revealed in our maps was consistent with FAR claims that it would have stopped much of the killing if the RPF had simply called a halt to its invasion. This conclusion runs counter to the Kagame administration's claims that the RPF continued its invasion to bring a halt to the killings.
In terms of ethnicity, the short answer to the question, "Who died?" is, "We'll probably never know." By and large, the Hutu and the Tutsi are physically indistinct from one another. They share a common language. They have no identifiable accent. They have had significant levels of intermarriage through their histories, and they have lived in similar locations for the past several hundred years. In the 1920s and 1930s, the Belgians, in their role as occupying power, put together a national program to try to identify individuals' ethnic identity through phrenology, an abortive attempt to create an ethnicity scale based on measurable physical features such as height, nose width and weight, with the hope that colonial administrators would not have to rely on identity cards.
One result of the Belgian efforts was to show — convincingly — that there is no observable difference on average between the typical Hutu Rwandan and the typical Tutsi Rwandan. Some clans — such as those of the current president, Paul Kagame, or the earlier Hutu president,Juvenal Habyarimana — do share distinctive physical traits. But the typical Rwandan shares a mix of such archetypal traits, making ethnic identity outside of local knowledge about an individual household's identity difficult if not impossible to ascertain — especially in mass graves containing no identifying information. (For example, Physicians for Human Rights exhumed a mass grave in western Rwanda and found the remains of more than 450 people, but only six identity cards.)
In court transcripts for multiple trials at the ICTR, witnesses described surviving the killings that took place around them by simply hiding among members of the opposite ethnic group. It is clear that in 1994, killers would have had a difficult time ascertaining the ethnic identity of their putative victims, unless they were targeting neighbors.
Complicating matters is the displacement that accompanied the RPF invasion. During 1994, some 2 million Rwandan citizens became external refugees, 1 million to 2 million became internal refugees, and about 1 million eventually became victims of civil war and genocide.
Ethnic identity in Rwanda is local knowledge, in much the same way that caste is local knowledge in India. With the majority of the population on the move, local knowledge and ethnic identity disappeared. This is not to say that the indigenous Tutsi were not sought out deliberately for extermination. But in their killing rampages, FAR, the Interahamwe and private citizens engaged in killing victims of both ethnic groups. And people from both ethnic groups were on the move, trying to stay out in front of the fighting as the RPF advanced.
In the end, our best estimate of who died during the 1994 massacre was, really, an educated guess based on an estimate of the number of Tutsi in the country at the outset of the war and the number who survived the war. Using a simple method —subtracting the survivors from the number of Tutsi residents at the outset of the violence — we arrived at an estimated total of somewhere between 300,000 and 500,000 Tutsi victims. If we believe the estimate of close to 1 million total civilian deaths in the war and genocide, we are then left with between 500,000 and 700,000 Hutu deaths, and a best guess that the majority of victims were in fact Hutu, not Tutsi.
This conclusion — which has drawn criticism from the Kagame regime and its supporters — is buttressed by the maps that we painstakingly constructed from the best available data and that show significant numbers of people killed in areas under control of the Tutsi-led RPF.
One fact is now becoming increasingly well understood: During the genocide and civil war that took place in Rwanda in 1994, multiple processes of violence took place simultaneously. Clearly there was a genocidal campaign, directed to some degree by the Hutu government, resulting directly in the deaths of some 100,000 or more Tutsi. At the same time, a civil war raged — a war that began in 1990, if the focus is on only the most recent and intense violence, but had roots that extend all the way back to the 1950s. Clearly, there was also random, wanton violence associated with the breakdown of order during the civil war. There's also no question that large-scale retribution killings took place throughout the country — retribution killings by Hutu of Tutsi, and vice versa.
From the beginning, the ICTR's investigation into the mass killings and crimes against humanity in Rwanda in 1994 has focused myopically on the culpability of Hutu leaders and other presumed participants. The Kagame administration has worked assiduously to prevent any investigation into RPF culpability for either mass killings or the random violence associated with the civil war. By raising the possibility that in addition to Hutu/FAR wrongdoing, the RPF was involved, either directly or indirectly, in many deaths, we became in effect persona non grata in Rwanda and at the ICTR.
The most commonly invoked metaphor for the 1994 Rwandan violence is the Holocaust. Elsewhere, we have suggested that perhaps theEnglish civil war, the Greek civil war, the Chinese civil war or the Russian civil war might be more apt comparisons because they all involved some combination of ethnic-based violence and the random slaughter and retribution that can occur when civil society breaks down altogether.
Actually, though, it is difficult to make authoritative comparisons when it remains unclear exactly what happened in the Rwandan civil war and genocide.
Contemporary observers — including Romeo Dallaire, the commander of the ineffective U.N. peacekeeping force for Rwanda in 1993 and 1994 — claim that much of the genocidal killing had been planned by the Hutu government as early as two years in advance of the actual RPF invasion. Unfortunately, we have not been able to gain access to the individuals who have information on that score to either corroborate or to refute the hypothesis. The reason? Convicted genocidaires who have been implicated in the planning of the slaughter now reside out of contact with potential interviewers in a U.N.-sponsored prison in Mali.
We wanted to put questions to these planners, specifically to ask them what their goals were. Was the genocide plan an attempt at deterrence, an effort that the FAR leadership thought might keep the RPF at bay in Uganda and elsewhere? Did the FAR government actually hope for war, believing — incorrectly as it turned out — that it would win? Was the scale of the killing beyond its expectations? If so, why do FAR leaders believe events spun so badly out of control, compared to previous spasms of violence in the 1960s, '70s and '80s?
Unfortunately, the U.N. prosecutors in Tanzania told us they could not arrange a meeting with the convicted planners and killers, but we were free to go to Mali on our own. We were told we would probably get in to see the prisoners, but the prison is in the middle of nowhere, in a country where we had no contacts. We had to let go.
Even without access to convicted genocidaires, we continued to piece together what had happened in 1994 with the help of a grant from theNational Science Foundation. The grant allowed us to be more ambitious in our pursuit of diverse informants who started popping up all over the globe, to refine our mapping and to explore alternative ways of generating estimates about what had taken place. While our understanding has advanced a great deal since our first days in Kigali, it is hard not to see irony in a current reality: Some of the most important information about what occurred in Rwanda in 1994 has been sent — by the very authorities responsible for investigating the violence and preventing its recurrence, in Rwanda and elsewhere — to an isolated prison, where it sits unexamined, like some artifact in the final scene of an Indiana Jones movie.
13 October, 2009
Soros funds buy stake in Platinum Australia.
Reuters
By Julie Crust
12 Oct 2009
Funds controlled by billionaire investor George Soros have acquired at least a 9 percent stake in Platinum Australia Ltd (PLAq.L: Quote) (PLA.AX: Quote), the exploration company said in a statement on Monday.
Soros Fund Management acquired about 21.7 million shares via Quantum Partners LDC and RS Capital Partners Ltd on Oct. 8 after a share placement by Platinum Australia.
The move is part of the growing interest shown by fund managers and other investors in the mining sector as commodity prices recover from the lows of 2008.
"We get the feeling that fund managers in general are still very positive about the commodity outlook," said Leon Esterhuizen, analyst at RBC Capital Markets.
"People are starting to look around and see which commodities have been left behind, which particular stocks are left behind, and junior producers generally fall into that category." Platinum Australia operates the Smokey Hills platinum mine in South Africa, which has a projected average annual production capacity of 100,000 ounces of platinum group metals (PGMs), and PGM projects in South Africa and Australia.
Junior PGM producers in South Africa have lower costs than many of the major mining companies who are struggling with the stronger rand even amid higher commodity prices, Esterhuizen said.
By Julie Crust
12 Oct 2009
Funds controlled by billionaire investor George Soros have acquired at least a 9 percent stake in Platinum Australia Ltd (PLAq.L: Quote) (PLA.AX: Quote), the exploration company said in a statement on Monday.
Soros Fund Management acquired about 21.7 million shares via Quantum Partners LDC and RS Capital Partners Ltd on Oct. 8 after a share placement by Platinum Australia.
The move is part of the growing interest shown by fund managers and other investors in the mining sector as commodity prices recover from the lows of 2008.
"We get the feeling that fund managers in general are still very positive about the commodity outlook," said Leon Esterhuizen, analyst at RBC Capital Markets.
"People are starting to look around and see which commodities have been left behind, which particular stocks are left behind, and junior producers generally fall into that category." Platinum Australia operates the Smokey Hills platinum mine in South Africa, which has a projected average annual production capacity of 100,000 ounces of platinum group metals (PGMs), and PGM projects in South Africa and Australia.
Junior PGM producers in South Africa have lower costs than many of the major mining companies who are struggling with the stronger rand even amid higher commodity prices, Esterhuizen said.
Kenya Begins Drilling for Oil in Two Weeks
Daily Nation
Mwaniki Wahome
12 October 2009
Nairobi — Kenya's search for oil will intensify with the drilling of oil at Boghal near Isiolo in the next two weeks.
Energy minister Kiraitu Murungi said the government had signed 18 oil production sharing contracts in the last 18 months noting that they were at various stages of exploration.
Speaking during the opening of the second South-South meeting on gas and oil management at Windsor Golf and Country Club in Nairobi, the minister said exploration had been stepped up in recent years. He said there were high hopes that the country could strike oil soon.
"For many years, Kenya has been part of the neglected East African exploration frontier. However, in the last five years, we have intensified the search for oil and gas in all our sedimentary basins," said Mr Murungi.
He said China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which will undertake the drilling, was mobilising the equipment for sinking the well.
The minister said the well would be five kilometres deep and is estimated to cost the company $26 million (Sh2 billion).
This is the second major attempt at finding oil in recent years after an Australian company, Woodside Energy sank Sh5 billion into the three-kilometre deep well off the Lamu coast that bore no fruit.
"This will be the deepest well ever drilled in Kenya. With the discoveries in Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania, we believe Kenya is now standing at the door. It is only a matter of time," said Mr Murungi.
He said there was need to sharpen negotiation skills to manage the anticipated oil revenue to benefit the people, noting that the country would learn from the ongoing conference.
Mr Murungi, however, warned that increased agitation by non-governmental organisations could slow down efforts at exploiting the country's oil potential.
He said some associated oil exploration with dictatorship, imperialism, exploitation, neglect of agriculture, marginalisation and civil strife on the continent.
The minister said Kenya would strive to benefit the communities residing where oil will be discovered to alleviate poverty.
Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, who represented President Kibaki at the opening ceremony, said it was projected that oil and gas would account for two thirds of global energy consumption by 2020.
Out of this, 80 per cent in oil demand will be in developing countries, which will account for 46 per cent of the world oil consumption by 2025.
The conference ends on Thursday.
Mwaniki Wahome
12 October 2009
Nairobi — Kenya's search for oil will intensify with the drilling of oil at Boghal near Isiolo in the next two weeks.
Energy minister Kiraitu Murungi said the government had signed 18 oil production sharing contracts in the last 18 months noting that they were at various stages of exploration.
Speaking during the opening of the second South-South meeting on gas and oil management at Windsor Golf and Country Club in Nairobi, the minister said exploration had been stepped up in recent years. He said there were high hopes that the country could strike oil soon.
"For many years, Kenya has been part of the neglected East African exploration frontier. However, in the last five years, we have intensified the search for oil and gas in all our sedimentary basins," said Mr Murungi.
He said China National Offshore Oil Corporation, which will undertake the drilling, was mobilising the equipment for sinking the well.
The minister said the well would be five kilometres deep and is estimated to cost the company $26 million (Sh2 billion).
This is the second major attempt at finding oil in recent years after an Australian company, Woodside Energy sank Sh5 billion into the three-kilometre deep well off the Lamu coast that bore no fruit.
"This will be the deepest well ever drilled in Kenya. With the discoveries in Sudan, Uganda and Tanzania, we believe Kenya is now standing at the door. It is only a matter of time," said Mr Murungi.
He said there was need to sharpen negotiation skills to manage the anticipated oil revenue to benefit the people, noting that the country would learn from the ongoing conference.
Mr Murungi, however, warned that increased agitation by non-governmental organisations could slow down efforts at exploiting the country's oil potential.
He said some associated oil exploration with dictatorship, imperialism, exploitation, neglect of agriculture, marginalisation and civil strife on the continent.
The minister said Kenya would strive to benefit the communities residing where oil will be discovered to alleviate poverty.
Vice-President Kalonzo Musyoka, who represented President Kibaki at the opening ceremony, said it was projected that oil and gas would account for two thirds of global energy consumption by 2020.
Out of this, 80 per cent in oil demand will be in developing countries, which will account for 46 per cent of the world oil consumption by 2025.
The conference ends on Thursday.
Kazini loses appeal, goes to highest court.
The New Vision
12th October, 2009
By Charles Ariko
The Constitutional Court yesterday dismissed a petition filed by former army commander Maj. Gen. James Kazini in which he had challenged his prosecution, trial and conviction by the court martial.
All the five judges dismissed the petition, saying Kazini could have used other options available through the civil courts to address the issues he raised.
In March 2008, Kazini was convicted and sentenced to three years imprisonment for causing financial loss of over sh61m to the Government.
At the time of his conviction, Kazini was also facing a string of other charges that included forgery, uttering false documents, conspiracy to defraud and disobedience of orders.
Some cases at the army court were halted awaiting the ruling of the Constitutional Court, that was delivered yesterday.
After he appealed against his conviction, Kazini, who had spent some days in Luzira Prison, was released on bail pending the outcome of his appeal.
The dismissal of his petition would ordinarily mean that he now goes back to the army’s appeal court.
“All the issues raised in the petition concerned merely enforcement by the petitioner of the options available under the civil court rules,” said the lead judge, Alice Mpagi Bahigeine.
“I dismiss the petition with costs. He is not entitled to any of the declarations or remedies sought.”
Kazini had argued that he was unfairly tried by different court panels.
He also alleged discriminatory treatment because he was tried by the army court instead of the civil courts, like some of his colleagues.
He said being tried by the court martial meant he would lose his rank and be dismissed with disgrace from the army. Kazini’s lawyer Kenneth Kakuru yesterday said he would appeal against the ruling of the Constitutional Court before the Supreme Court, the highest in the land.
“We are not convinced by the ruling. We are going to appeal,” Kakuru told The New Vision.
12th October, 2009
By Charles Ariko
The Constitutional Court yesterday dismissed a petition filed by former army commander Maj. Gen. James Kazini in which he had challenged his prosecution, trial and conviction by the court martial.
All the five judges dismissed the petition, saying Kazini could have used other options available through the civil courts to address the issues he raised.
In March 2008, Kazini was convicted and sentenced to three years imprisonment for causing financial loss of over sh61m to the Government.
At the time of his conviction, Kazini was also facing a string of other charges that included forgery, uttering false documents, conspiracy to defraud and disobedience of orders.
Some cases at the army court were halted awaiting the ruling of the Constitutional Court, that was delivered yesterday.
After he appealed against his conviction, Kazini, who had spent some days in Luzira Prison, was released on bail pending the outcome of his appeal.
The dismissal of his petition would ordinarily mean that he now goes back to the army’s appeal court.
“All the issues raised in the petition concerned merely enforcement by the petitioner of the options available under the civil court rules,” said the lead judge, Alice Mpagi Bahigeine.
“I dismiss the petition with costs. He is not entitled to any of the declarations or remedies sought.”
Kazini had argued that he was unfairly tried by different court panels.
He also alleged discriminatory treatment because he was tried by the army court instead of the civil courts, like some of his colleagues.
He said being tried by the court martial meant he would lose his rank and be dismissed with disgrace from the army. Kazini’s lawyer Kenneth Kakuru yesterday said he would appeal against the ruling of the Constitutional Court before the Supreme Court, the highest in the land.
“We are not convinced by the ruling. We are going to appeal,” Kakuru told The New Vision.
Kosmos Confirms Deal to Sell Exxon Stake in Ghana's Jubilee Field.
by Will Connors
Dow Jones Newswires
10/12/2009
URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=81329
LAGOS, Nigeria (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL via Dow Jones), Oct. 12, 2009
Kosmos Energy said Monday it signed an exclusive deal with Exxon Mobil Corp. to sell its stake in a significant oil discovery off the coast of Ghana, the first confirmation from either company of the deal, said to be worth $4 billion.
"I can confirm that Kosmos has entered into an exclusive binding agreement with a third party (an affiliate of Exxon Mobil) in relation to the sale of its Ghana assets," Kosmos Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Greg Dunlevy said in an email to The Wall Street Journal.
The announcement comes a day after it emerged that China National Offshore Oil Corp., or Cnooc, is in advanced talks with Ghana National Petroleum Corp. to make a rival bid for Kosmos' stake in the field, known as Jubilee.
Dunlevy did not disclose the deals' price tag, but sources told the Journal over the weekend that the deal was worth an estimated $4 billion.
Kosmos has not yet heard from representatives of Cnooc or GNPC regarding an offer for their stake in the field, estimated to hold 1.8 billion barrels of oil, a person close to the matter said. Kosmos is a privately held Dallas company backed by private-equity firms Warburg Pincus and Blackstone Group LP.
The Ghanaian government is angry at Kosmos for what it perceives is a flouting of its laws -- in particular the sharing of oilfield data. Ghana's oil minister and the head of GNPC have both said they do not consider the Kosmos-Exxon deal done, and that they have the right to cancel any contract.
Kosmos owns a 23.5% stake in Jubilee. Tullow Oil PLC owns 34.7% and is the operator. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. owns 23.5% and GNPC has a 13.75% stake. Two other companies hold very small positions.
Exxon has declined to comment on the matter in the past week and a spokesman didn't immediately provide a response to questions.
Negotiations between Kosmos and the Ghanaian government have long been rocky, people close to the matter say, and China's entry into the talks is sure to complicate things further.
In June, relations between Kosmos and Ghana officials hit a rocky patch when the Ghanaian minister of energy felt insulted during negotiations with Kosmos officials.
"He doesn't understand African courtesies when negotiating," the person said, referring to the Kosmos executive. "So he easily infuriated the minister. Once that happens, the minister might also take a harder stand."
A week later, the minister and the CEO happened to be seated next to each other on a flight to London and an awkward exchange took place before "everyone put on a brave face," according to the person.
Dow Jones Newswires
10/12/2009
URL: http://www.rigzone.com/news/article.asp?a_id=81329
LAGOS, Nigeria (THE WALL STREET JOURNAL via Dow Jones), Oct. 12, 2009
Kosmos Energy said Monday it signed an exclusive deal with Exxon Mobil Corp. to sell its stake in a significant oil discovery off the coast of Ghana, the first confirmation from either company of the deal, said to be worth $4 billion.
"I can confirm that Kosmos has entered into an exclusive binding agreement with a third party (an affiliate of Exxon Mobil) in relation to the sale of its Ghana assets," Kosmos Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Greg Dunlevy said in an email to The Wall Street Journal.
The announcement comes a day after it emerged that China National Offshore Oil Corp., or Cnooc, is in advanced talks with Ghana National Petroleum Corp. to make a rival bid for Kosmos' stake in the field, known as Jubilee.
Dunlevy did not disclose the deals' price tag, but sources told the Journal over the weekend that the deal was worth an estimated $4 billion.
Kosmos has not yet heard from representatives of Cnooc or GNPC regarding an offer for their stake in the field, estimated to hold 1.8 billion barrels of oil, a person close to the matter said. Kosmos is a privately held Dallas company backed by private-equity firms Warburg Pincus and Blackstone Group LP.
The Ghanaian government is angry at Kosmos for what it perceives is a flouting of its laws -- in particular the sharing of oilfield data. Ghana's oil minister and the head of GNPC have both said they do not consider the Kosmos-Exxon deal done, and that they have the right to cancel any contract.
Kosmos owns a 23.5% stake in Jubilee. Tullow Oil PLC owns 34.7% and is the operator. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. owns 23.5% and GNPC has a 13.75% stake. Two other companies hold very small positions.
Exxon has declined to comment on the matter in the past week and a spokesman didn't immediately provide a response to questions.
Negotiations between Kosmos and the Ghanaian government have long been rocky, people close to the matter say, and China's entry into the talks is sure to complicate things further.
In June, relations between Kosmos and Ghana officials hit a rocky patch when the Ghanaian minister of energy felt insulted during negotiations with Kosmos officials.
"He doesn't understand African courtesies when negotiating," the person said, referring to the Kosmos executive. "So he easily infuriated the minister. Once that happens, the minister might also take a harder stand."
A week later, the minister and the CEO happened to be seated next to each other on a flight to London and an awkward exchange took place before "everyone put on a brave face," according to the person.
12 October, 2009
Consensus PM Named in Madagascar.
MISNA
12 October 2009
Eugene Mangalaza was named as Prime Minister under an accord reached by Madagascar’s main parties, mediated by the international Contact Group. Mangalaza, a professor of social anthropology and considered politically neutral though close to former president Didier Ratsikara, succeeds Monja Roindefo, who however refuses to step down. “I don’t intend to remain gripped to my post, though given that they are demanding my resignation based on the Maputo power-sharing accord, I ask that all points of the deal are respected”, said Roindefo, referring to the fact that neither Andry Rajoelina nor the ousted president Marc Ravalomanana signed any formal agreement. The side of Ravalomanana, ousted in March, agreed to allow Rajoelina to lead the country under the condition he does not run in next year’s presidential election, though the transitional leader has not commented personally on the condition. The accord reached last week between representatives of the four main political parts foresees a power-sharing administration with Mangalaza as Premier, Rajoelina as President and Emmanuel Rakotovahiny, a minister under former president Albert Zafy, as Vice-President.
12 October 2009
Eugene Mangalaza was named as Prime Minister under an accord reached by Madagascar’s main parties, mediated by the international Contact Group. Mangalaza, a professor of social anthropology and considered politically neutral though close to former president Didier Ratsikara, succeeds Monja Roindefo, who however refuses to step down. “I don’t intend to remain gripped to my post, though given that they are demanding my resignation based on the Maputo power-sharing accord, I ask that all points of the deal are respected”, said Roindefo, referring to the fact that neither Andry Rajoelina nor the ousted president Marc Ravalomanana signed any formal agreement. The side of Ravalomanana, ousted in March, agreed to allow Rajoelina to lead the country under the condition he does not run in next year’s presidential election, though the transitional leader has not commented personally on the condition. The accord reached last week between representatives of the four main political parts foresees a power-sharing administration with Mangalaza as Premier, Rajoelina as President and Emmanuel Rakotovahiny, a minister under former president Albert Zafy, as Vice-President.
East Africa: Cost of Two-Way Pipeline Triples to U.S.$250 Million.
The East African
Julius Barigaba
12 October 2009
Nairobi — A fresh twist in the never-ending drama of the Eldoret-Kampala oil pipeline has emerged.
The Energy Ministry and the project contractor are at loggerheads over the total cost of the project, whose design has been changed several times, The EastAfrican has learnt.
The latest changes in design have apparently pushed the project cost up by more than three times, to $250 million -- which experts say will impact on the user tariff.
The contractor -- Tamoil East Africa, a subsidiary of Libya oil giant Tamoil -- wants to give the pipeline the capacity to route refined oil products both ways.
This is because it is becoming increasingly likely that an oil refinery will be built in western Uganda, signalling yet another arena of competing interests in Uganda's oil find.
Tamoil-EA chairman Habib Kagimu says the pipeline's design needs "reverse engineering" to pump oil products from the interior, and vice versa.
But other costs that have come into the picture include the refurbishing of the Jinja oil reserves depot and the changing of the pipeline's diameter from six to 10 inches.
Because of this, the project's total cost has more than tripled, from $80 million at the time of awarding the tender in January 2007 to $250 million.
That is an escalation of 213 per cent from the original cost.
But sources in the Ministry of Energy said this figure is being disputed.
"We have not agreed on the cost for this design. The cost is still being negotiated and it must come down. We are changing a lot of things, including the pipe diameter and reverse pumping. But still, there is no way this project can jump from $80 million to this," a source said.
State Minister for Energy Simon D'ujang adopted a diplomatic tone when contacted on phone, saying he was aware of these design changes but that no figure was agreed on between the ministry and Tamoil.
"There have been changes. We now have a bigger pipeline and it is reversible. So we are aware that the final cost will change. But we are still discussing the cost. I cannot speculate on the figure and it's not wise to do so when you are still discussing," he said.
Procurement rules provide for revision of project costs, as long as the revised figure does not exceed 115 per cent of the original, after which there is an immediate re-tendering of the project.
Should one party amend the cost more than once, the cumulative amendments must not exceed 25 per cent of the original cost.
A senior official at the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority says the procurement watchdog has no jurisdiction over the contract because it was handled "at international level" between Tamoil and the two countries.
The delays imply a possible spike in the pipeline's tariff that was originally projected at $20 per 1,000 litres, representing a 40-50 per cent reduction from the cost of transporting oil products by rail.
In February this year, the government acquired a one square mile piece of land 20 km west of Kampala, where the pipeline's inland terminal will be built.
Since acquiring land along the pipeline's 224km route within Uganda was proving a huge hurdle, the Ministry of Energy was keen on fast-tracking this part of the project. The contractor was to start construction in May this year.
So far, the government has secured land only for the inland terminal, and has completed the evaluation of some 130km for the pipeline access land between Jinja and Tororo.
Aware that acquiring land between Jinja and Kampala is more costly than in the rest of the route, the contractor is reportedly waiting for the government to get all the necessary access before any work starts.
"The cost of land will determine the tariff. The contractor wants to know whether the project is viable," a source said.
Project manager Ahmed El Gembri declined to comment on the delays when contacted on phone.
The Eldoret-Kampala pipeline is a joint venture between the governments of Kenya, Uganda and private investor Tamoil.
The contract was awarded to the Libyan state subsidiary in 2007 -- 20-year build, own operate and transfer (BOOT) tender for the 352km pipeline.
From the outset, the project split was 51 per cent for Tamoil and 24.5 per cent each for the two governments.
Along the way, Uganda cited lack of funds to meet its equity, thus diluting its ownership in the pipeline, but maintaining a "carried interest."
Last year, Kampala ceded 12 per cent of its stake in the pipeline to Tamoil and other private interests.
This means that its equity contribution also significantly came down from $5.8 million as the government concentrated on mainly providing land as its contribution.
Reports indicate that only about 10 per cent of land acquisition remains.
In several meetings between the contractor, representatives of the two governments and the Kenya Pipeline Company, Tamoil officials have made it clear that the company wants to recover its investment faster.
This alone spells a high tariff ahead for the multiproduct pipeline.
Julius Barigaba
12 October 2009
Nairobi — A fresh twist in the never-ending drama of the Eldoret-Kampala oil pipeline has emerged.
The Energy Ministry and the project contractor are at loggerheads over the total cost of the project, whose design has been changed several times, The EastAfrican has learnt.
The latest changes in design have apparently pushed the project cost up by more than three times, to $250 million -- which experts say will impact on the user tariff.
The contractor -- Tamoil East Africa, a subsidiary of Libya oil giant Tamoil -- wants to give the pipeline the capacity to route refined oil products both ways.
This is because it is becoming increasingly likely that an oil refinery will be built in western Uganda, signalling yet another arena of competing interests in Uganda's oil find.
Tamoil-EA chairman Habib Kagimu says the pipeline's design needs "reverse engineering" to pump oil products from the interior, and vice versa.
But other costs that have come into the picture include the refurbishing of the Jinja oil reserves depot and the changing of the pipeline's diameter from six to 10 inches.
Because of this, the project's total cost has more than tripled, from $80 million at the time of awarding the tender in January 2007 to $250 million.
That is an escalation of 213 per cent from the original cost.
But sources in the Ministry of Energy said this figure is being disputed.
"We have not agreed on the cost for this design. The cost is still being negotiated and it must come down. We are changing a lot of things, including the pipe diameter and reverse pumping. But still, there is no way this project can jump from $80 million to this," a source said.
State Minister for Energy Simon D'ujang adopted a diplomatic tone when contacted on phone, saying he was aware of these design changes but that no figure was agreed on between the ministry and Tamoil.
"There have been changes. We now have a bigger pipeline and it is reversible. So we are aware that the final cost will change. But we are still discussing the cost. I cannot speculate on the figure and it's not wise to do so when you are still discussing," he said.
Procurement rules provide for revision of project costs, as long as the revised figure does not exceed 115 per cent of the original, after which there is an immediate re-tendering of the project.
Should one party amend the cost more than once, the cumulative amendments must not exceed 25 per cent of the original cost.
A senior official at the Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority says the procurement watchdog has no jurisdiction over the contract because it was handled "at international level" between Tamoil and the two countries.
The delays imply a possible spike in the pipeline's tariff that was originally projected at $20 per 1,000 litres, representing a 40-50 per cent reduction from the cost of transporting oil products by rail.
In February this year, the government acquired a one square mile piece of land 20 km west of Kampala, where the pipeline's inland terminal will be built.
Since acquiring land along the pipeline's 224km route within Uganda was proving a huge hurdle, the Ministry of Energy was keen on fast-tracking this part of the project. The contractor was to start construction in May this year.
So far, the government has secured land only for the inland terminal, and has completed the evaluation of some 130km for the pipeline access land between Jinja and Tororo.
Aware that acquiring land between Jinja and Kampala is more costly than in the rest of the route, the contractor is reportedly waiting for the government to get all the necessary access before any work starts.
"The cost of land will determine the tariff. The contractor wants to know whether the project is viable," a source said.
Project manager Ahmed El Gembri declined to comment on the delays when contacted on phone.
The Eldoret-Kampala pipeline is a joint venture between the governments of Kenya, Uganda and private investor Tamoil.
The contract was awarded to the Libyan state subsidiary in 2007 -- 20-year build, own operate and transfer (BOOT) tender for the 352km pipeline.
From the outset, the project split was 51 per cent for Tamoil and 24.5 per cent each for the two governments.
Along the way, Uganda cited lack of funds to meet its equity, thus diluting its ownership in the pipeline, but maintaining a "carried interest."
Last year, Kampala ceded 12 per cent of its stake in the pipeline to Tamoil and other private interests.
This means that its equity contribution also significantly came down from $5.8 million as the government concentrated on mainly providing land as its contribution.
Reports indicate that only about 10 per cent of land acquisition remains.
In several meetings between the contractor, representatives of the two governments and the Kenya Pipeline Company, Tamoil officials have made it clear that the company wants to recover its investment faster.
This alone spells a high tariff ahead for the multiproduct pipeline.
11 October, 2009
India, Russia to sign new military pact.
RIA Novosti
11 October 2009
India and Russia will extend their strategic and military partnership when they sign a new military cooperation agreement in December, an Indian daily said on Saturday.
According to The Times of India, a 10-year deal will be signed in the course of a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow.
It said the groundwork for the agreement will be laid when Defense Minister A.K. Antony visits Moscow next week for talks with his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov.
The current cooperation program comprises about 200 joint projects, including the modernization of the Vikramaditya aircraft carrier (formerly the Admiral Gorshkov) for the Indian navy, the transfer of technology for the licensed assembly of T-90 tanks in India, the production of BrahMos missiles and the purchase of Smerch MLRS by India.
11 October 2009
India and Russia will extend their strategic and military partnership when they sign a new military cooperation agreement in December, an Indian daily said on Saturday.
According to The Times of India, a 10-year deal will be signed in the course of a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow.
It said the groundwork for the agreement will be laid when Defense Minister A.K. Antony visits Moscow next week for talks with his Russian counterpart Anatoly Serdyukov.
The current cooperation program comprises about 200 joint projects, including the modernization of the Vikramaditya aircraft carrier (formerly the Admiral Gorshkov) for the Indian navy, the transfer of technology for the licensed assembly of T-90 tanks in India, the production of BrahMos missiles and the purchase of Smerch MLRS by India.
CHRI Report: Reject Rwanda's Commonwealth Application Immediately.
http://www.humanrightsinitiative.org/publications/hradvocacy/rwanda's_application_for_membership_of_the_commonwealth.pdf
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