Burundian buddy and then housemate Alexis Sinduhidje told me one day
in Cambridge, MA: "If you think this war is bloody, then brace for the
looming bloddier Africa's Water Wars, whose battleground will also be
the Congo!"
I've always taken seriously everything Alexis says.
But most Congolese I've talked to since then about the looming water
wars didn't take that possibility seriously--with the exception of one
senior officer of the FARDC General Staff who actually brought the
subject in a conversation I had with him several weeks ago.
March 22 was the UN World Water Day. And on that occasion, DRC
Conservation Minister José Endundo Bononge, whose ministry's purview
is also naturally water resource management, made a 5-minute nightly
television appearance to remind citizens about this year's theme of
that celebration: Water and Food Security.
The only interesting part of Endundo's address was when he mentioned
the disruptive impact of climate change on agriculture
calendar--especially as agriculture here relies on rainfall--resulting
in dramatic decreases of annual yields.
Not a word however about silting that threatens streams, brooks, and
waterways. Not a peep about water jacinths choking life out of the
Congo River and its affluents. Nothing about the sediments of plastic
bags and raw sewage killing brooks right here in Kinshasa. And more
importantly, a total blackout on the link between water and conflict.
Had I been able to talk to the minister, I'd have brought to the
attention of Endundo two scary articles published respectively on
March 22 and 23: 1) Karen DeYoung's "Water as a weapon" (Washington
Post) and Steven Lee Myers's "U.S. Intelligence Report Warns of Global
Water Tensions" (New York Times).
Both articles report ominous findings in the declassified version of a
report on future water-related conflicts released Thursday by the
office of the Director of National Intelligence, which alleges that,
in the coming decade, "Fresh-water shortages and more droughts and
floods will increase the likelihood that water will be used as a
weapon between states or to further terrorist aims in key strategic
areas, including the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa"--thus
having an "impact [on] U.S. security interests" (Washington Post).
Interestingly, notes the Washington Post, while "the unclassified
version does not mention problems in specific countries, it describes
'strategically important water basins' tied to rivers in several
regions."
Which means that the Congo Basin, being among the world's 4 largest
river basins, was most definitely mentioned in the report. Which begs
the following question: What are the designs or the assessment of the
classified version of the report on the Congo Basin?
These articles also mention that the release of the report "coincides"
with Secretary Hillary Clinton's "scheduled announcement" of a new
public-private partnership to help the world face up to this water
challenge (Washington Post). And the article in The New York Times
specifies that among the private partners Secretary Clinton has in
mind is Coca-Cola!
This would certainly sound as a cruel joke in India ...
Secretary Clinton is well aware that Coca-Cola has been repeatedly
sued by peasants and landowners in rural India... for sucking ground
water dry so as to manufacture its products... and in drought-stricken
areas no less! In one instance in an Indian state, a court ordered a
Coca-Cola plant to shut down its operations and pay more than $1m in
damages to water-deprived local farmers. And another court case is
still pending in another Indian state.
It thus follows that no one in India would ever buy this Foggy Bottom
bunkum. Indeed, it's all about US national security interests, not
those of some Indian impoverished peasants. And if it suits US
interests to let Coca-Cola dry those suckers out of their livelihoods,
so be it! Remember that under Ronald Reagan, Coca-Cola, taking its cue
from the administration, refused to divest from apartheid-ruled South
Africa.
Security-challenged DRC and other countries in the Congo Basin will be
particularly vulnerable in those water wars.
A dystopian movie pitch... Sometime in an unspecified future. Dawn of
a new scramble for Africa... Africa, where a third of the population
has already been wiped out by "climate weirding," to use Thomas
Friedman's phrase. Mightier countries within the UN Security Council
vote a resolution to send their armies to seize the mismanaged water
resources of the Congo Basin... where the Congo River is slowly drying
up after the implementation of the crazy notion of deflecting a part
of the water of the Congo River to the shrinking Lake Chad, which
didn't help: the Chad ended up drying out completely.
In that venture, the US outsources water management in that region to
Coca-Cola and other American soda companies... under the protection of
AFRICOM and mercenaries.
2) DRC to UN Joint Human Rights Office: "Show us those mass graves!"
The report released Tuesday by the UN Joint Human Rights Office on the
alleged killings and other human rights violations during the election
period in November of last year is so outlandish that one doesn't
where to start to refute it.
It is just such exercise that the government has been attempting since
the release of the report. Furthermore, the government has now upped
the ante and is demanding a full-scale investigation into the
selective, partial, and spurious allegations contained in the report.
Justice Minister Périclès-Emmanuel Luzolo Bambi Lessa came out first
swinging two days ago. He denounced the report as a web of lies and
an attempt to torpedo the hosting by the DRC in October (12th to 14th)
of this year of the 14th Francophonie Summit.
"This report appears to only aim to tarnish the image of Congolese
authorities," Luzolo said.
Luzolo is dead on target there. In fact, some of the allegations in
that report had all the earmarks redolent of worn-out and preporterous
cliches of Zaire-Congo Bashing.
Consider for example the allegation that Kabila has his torture
chambers in the basement of the Palais du Peuple, the seat of National
Assembly.
This ridiculous allegation reminded me of the documentary "When We
Were Kings" in which you hear Norman Mailer lie through his teeth
when he makes the stupid claim that Mobutu had his torture chambers in
the basement of Tata Raphael soccer stadium where Ali and Foreman had
their Rumble in the Jungle bout. The problem with Mailer's lie is that
there's no basement at that stadium!
The DRC government is so exercised by the many lies contained in the
UN Joint Human Rights Office report that Foreign Affairs Minister
Alexis Thambwe Mwamba, flanked by Luzolo and his deputy, convened
today ambassadors accredited to Kinshasa to a press conference where
he vented the government's outrage over the "lightness" and frivolity
of the report. Thambwe also earnestly demanded that a joint
investigation be carried out to look into the bizarre accusations made
in the report.
Thambwe acknowledge however that there were 22 dead in
election-related violence, more than half of whom were killed by UDPS
members--not the 33 killed the report alleged
to have been killed by security forces or the 16 people that still
"remain unaccounted for." He was also stunned by the fact that the
report didn't even bother to mention the call to ethnic hatred or
violence repeatedly made by one of the candidates (Tshisekedi) during
the electoral campaign.
(Tshisekedi was clamoring that Kabila is a Rwandan Tutsi who needed to
be sent back home. He also called for countrywide prison breaks, and
asked his followers to "terrorize" then Communication Lambert Mende
and to physically seize and bring him Kabila.)
Thambwe also showed a brochure seized a while ago by immigration
agents from UDPS Jacquemain Shabani at N'Djili Airport. The brochure
purported to document election violence in the Congo. The photographs
of slain people in Shabani's brochure were in fact taken from press
accounts documenting violence in Cote d'Ivoire and in Uganda!
Thambwe also demanded that UN Joint Human Rights Office investigators
show those mass graves they allege to have uncovered in Kinshasa.
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