TECHNOIR (14 page)
To this day, millions of Congolese blame the US for the PlayStation War. A belief mostly based on what is an obvious Western obsession with Congo minerals and the easy fortunes they make. But when it comes to America alone, Congo minerals historically were far more important than piles and piles of cash. Indeed, Congo minerals helped save Democracy from 20
th
century Fascism. During the Manhattan Project,
the US military acquired uranium from a mine in the Congolese town of Skinkolobwe to build the atomic bombs dropped on Japan.
Keep in mind, Rwanda claimed their strategic maneuvers in eastern Congo over the last 15 years were so to pursue the perpetrators of the 1994 genocide, the Hutus. But according to Professor Yaa-Lengi, who runs the New York-based Coalition for Peace, Justice and Democracy in the Congo, millions of Congolese say Rwanda is not telling the truth. Many Congolese also believe Rwanda is a US proxy, says Yaa-Lengi, and that Kagame and his Tutsis, under influence of the Clinton administration, actually ignited the 1994 Rwandan genocide as part of plan to help the West loot the eastern Congo of its minerals.
Echoing Yaa-Lengi are the Representatives of Chieftainships and Traditional Authority of the Congo, who have been circulating a web document that states “President William J. Clinton,” backed by multinational corporations, planned “this horrible war [the PlayStation War]” in order to steal Congo’s resources, a plan “supported by successive American administrations.”
“Bill Clinton was behind the 1994 genocide,” Professor Yaa-Lengi said to me in 2010. “Millions of Congolese believe this, yes.”
This is a mystery that may never be solved. But like the war in the eastern Congo itself, the price of coltan has since cooled and is being priced at levels pre-1999, as the demand for the “black gold” declines. Nevertheless, experts such as Barouski say another Congo resource will take its place as the next “hot commodity,” and the emergence of another African resource war will not be far behind.
Here’s a brief time line of the PlayStation War
1994: Genocide engulfs the central Africa nation of Rwanda as Hutu extremists, who represent the majority, try to eliminate the Tutsis minority. At the same time, participating in a US military training program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, Paul Kagame returns to his home country of Rwanda to lead the Tutsis, his ethnic tribe, over the Hutus. Kagame remains president of Rwanda to this day.
1995: An investigator from Human Rights Watch discovers that Pentagon contractor Ronco Consulting Corporation, a company known for clearing land mines from war zones, is funneling military equipment, explosives and armored vehicles to the Rwandan military, even though Rwanda is under a UN-imposed arms embargo.
1996: US troops are in Rwanda as its army and some proxy militias prepare to invade the eastern Congo to eliminate Hutu extremists alleged to have committed genocide in 1994. Officially, the Pentagon said the soldiers were there for “civilian affairs.” Later, in their own report to Congress, the Pentagon stated, besides basic military fundamentals, US military training included “psychological operations and tactical Special Forces exercises.” Rebel groups out of Uganda will also invade the eastern Congo this year.
1998: Rwanda invades the eastern Congo a second time. Rwanda’s president Kagame, once again, claims they are after the “genocidaires” of 1994. Also in 1998, the Pentagon acknowledges that a twenty-man U.S. Army Rwanda Interagency Assessment Team (or RIAT) was working in Rwanda at the time of the second Rwandan invasion of the eastern Congo.
1999: Rwandan troops and their rebel factions are now swarming throughout eastern DRC, a region dominated by the Virunga volcanic mountain chain. Hundreds of kilometers of the range are protected for the conservation of endangered species, like the mountain gorilla. But there is something within the mountains worth much more than eco-tourism. Coltan mines, and tons of stored coltan, are forcibly taken by the Rwandan military and their militias.
2000: Rwanda produces 83 tons from its own mines, but finds a way to export a total of 603 tons.
2003: Many of the warring parties, including the Rwandan government, sign the All Inclusive Agreement on the Transitional Government. The agreement marks a formal end to the combat and many troops do leave the country. Violence and human rights atrocities will continue in the eastern DRC, however, with no end in sight.
2003: The UN releases its third and final report on the DRC, titled, “Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the DRC.” The report does not directly blame computer and mobile phone makers, but calls foreign traders “the engine of the conflict in the DRC.” Nevertheless, the UN says the high-tech industry’s demand for tantalum fueled the fever to mine coltan in the eastern Congo. The UN also says “elite networks” of Rwandans and foreigners intentionally kept the war going so to continue to exploit the DRC’s natural resources, which also finance the war.
2006: At this stage of the conflict, journalists and other activists are reporting that the combatants in the eastern Congo are turning on the Congolese women. Thousands are raped, and as reported by the
Independent,
the barrels of firearms are placed in the vaginas of those raped, and the trigger pulled.
2009: Laurent Nkunda, a rebel leader who has a stronghold in eastern Congo and who is suspected of stealing resources out of the DRC for years, is captured by the Rwanda government. It is an ironic event: Nkunda had long been suspected of being a Rwandan stooge; with Rwanda considered by many to be an African puppet of the US.
2010: The U.S. continues to maintain strong ties with Rwanda. The U.S. State Department states US assistance to Rwanda “has increased four-fold over the past four years.”
Obliterating Osama bin Laden in under two hours
It is the year 2017, and a loaded United States bomber flying high above Beijing receives the order for a preemptive strike against China. But this is no ordinary bomber. It’s flying at an altitude of 80 miles, just outside the atmosphere. And this is no video game. It is part of an annual war game held at the
Air Force’s Space Warfare Center
at Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado.
“Every year, for the last several years, a preemptive first strike is made by the U.S., and the weapon used is the military space plane,” says Bruce Gagnon, director of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. It was Gagnon who first reported extensively on the Space Warfare Center’s war game.
Gagnon continues to keep a close eye on the Pentagon’s space-weapons lust. Since 2001, billions of defense dollars have been pumped into an already hefty space-weapon research budget. Because the US Air Force predicts some of the most critical battlefields of the 21
st
century won’t even involve dirt.
Space and cyberspace, says Air Force brass, is where wars of the future will be won or lost. And while “Battlesats” and space mines could become robotic soldiers of Earth’s lower orbits, it is the Space Planes, or Space Bombers, that could become the special forces of space. If completed, the US Space Bomber should have the dual capability of fighting within our atmosphere and in space. And unlike drones and UAV’s – quickly becoming the workhorses in Afghanistan and other War on Terror hotspots – a Space Bomber will be able to strike anywhere on the globe within 120 minutes or less. Drones, on other hand, have to be in-theatre to strike just as fast. The US Space Bomber will have this lightning-strike capability because it will already be in orbit, placed there months or even years beforehand. Thus it will continuously be circling the globe – waiting for orders.
And all one has to do to see a Space Bomber in action, is look to the skies near Los Angeles. In 2006, for example, an unmanned prototype US Space Plane called the
X-37
took flight from the Mojave Airport and Spaceport, roughly 50 miles north of Los Angeles. The unmanned X-37 was secured under the belly of an exotic corporate plane called the White Knight and was released from 37,000 feet. It was the space plane’s initial atmospheric “free flight” – and also its first crash. The X-37 was directed by remote control to land at Edwards Air Force Base near Los Angeles, but overshot the landing and busted up its nose.
“At one time, it was going to replace the Space Shuttle,” says Gagnon of the X-37, which looks like a smaller version of the Space Shuttle. In fact, it is nearly quarter the size of the Space Shuttle, with a wingspan of 15 feet. The Shuttle replacement plan was scrapped, however. In 2004, NASA handed over the X-37 to
DARPA
(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and the Phantom Works at Boeing, a major aerospace defense contractor racing to develop space weapons with millions of taxpayer dollars.
At Mojave, management bristled when I asked them whether military research is on the upswing within their hangers. There are no military offices at Mojave Airport and Spaceport, nor have they inked any contracts with the military, they said. But they admit that DARPA and other military personnel work onsite.
“Mojave Spaceport is a civilian aerospace test center for non-vertical launch space vehicles,” said Spaceport general manager Stuart Witt. “On occasion, small numbers of military personnel, civil servants, and contractors operate from Mojave Airport. Several tenants perform on government contracts utilizing integrated teams. In the past, DARPA and other government agencies have operated projects from here.”
This Military Space Place or MSP – like most US space weapon plans – is spreading anxiety across the globe. The Pentagon has an unknown number of “dual purpose” space planes in the works. They might be space bombers, but no one is completely sure. They’re so secret, no one can say what they’ll be used for or how far developed they are. A space vehicle that can repair, deploy and even attack satellites, or insert reconnaissance drones back into the atmosphere – all within hours of orders – is also desired. As one NASA official put it, the space plane/bomber will “be the key to opening and conquering the space frontier.” The fear of an American space bomber, say experts, has one significant and severe backlash. Other nations will develop their own space bombers or space weapons to counter any US MSP.
“There are scores of Chinese articles over the last two years that mention a U.S. space bomber,” said Gregory Kulacki, Chinese specialist for the
Union of Concerned Scientists
, from their office in Berkeley, California. “The Global Times and even television stations like Phoenix TV out of Hong Kong have a track record of hyping military technology and are unreliable, but the space bomber stories also appear in more reputable sources.”
Space weapons experts agree a US MSP is 10 to 20 years away from being operational. But a small number of MSP prototypes are in some type of wind tunnel. “We know this because it’s in the budget,” said Michael Katz-Hyman, a research associate for the Washington-based think-tank
Henry L. Stimson Center
, citing the research and development area of the Defense Department’s $400-billion, 2007 budget.
Early in the Bush administration and especially after 9/11, the Pentagon was making overtures that it desperately needed an ultimate quick-strike weapon when US forces, aircraft carriers, even drones, are far from the target. Soon enough, the Pentagon was salivating over the prospects of acquiring a bomber that could take out an enemy within two hours of getting eyes-on-the- target intelligence. Katz-Hyman says the space bomber’s research is driven by the Pentagon’s desire to carry out this “rapid global strike,” hit any target on Earth within two hours of orders being issued. Currently, long-range bomber runs using stealth bombers or B-52s take 12 to 24 hours to execute, depending on which U.S. base is used and where the target is located. It also depends on whether certain nations will allow us to fly in their airspace and what type of air defense the target is protected by.
The Pentagon has spoken little about exactly what targets could be obliterated by a space bomber, but the writing is on the cave’s wall: Osama bin Laden. If he were to ever be compromised, the US military would no doubt only have a two- hour window or less to send bin Laden to hell. The Pentagon also has noted that weapons-of-mass destruction, such as a North Korean nuclear warhead preparing to launch, might also need to be eliminated within under 120 minutes.
Like the space shuttle, the unmanned X-37 needs a rocket boost, or the assistance of another aircraft, to achieve orbit – and this requires a half-day of preparation before a mission. Katz-Hyman says the Air Force and DARPA hope to someday build a so-called “single-stage-to-orbit” space plane that will simply take off from a runway and break-out of the atmosphere into space. This type of craft is also known as a Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV). But in the case of the X-37, it might already be in a low-Earth-orbit someday, awaiting orders. In 2011, it is scheduled to be rocketed into space and placed into orbit for an entire year.