Article: NORTHERN UGANDA: Hidden War, Massive Suffering

Prendergast has achieved some recent notoriety by authoring a book about the Darfur crises with Don Cheadle, the Hollywood actor who starred in Hotel Rwanda. But John Prendergast’s role in manipulating world consciousness around war and genocide must be situated not in the “humanitarian” front that the ICG gives him, but in his role as National Security Council during the Clinton Administration. In 1997 he met frequently with other intelligence officials to organize the fall of the rogue Islamic state of Sudan. One event came under the euphemistic title: “Religion, Nationalism and Peace in Sudan” (www.usip.org/religionpeace/rehr/sudanconf/panel6.html). Speakers included John Prendergast and Roger Winter. Prendergast's discussions—published in unclassified documents—make it clear that economic and military pressure was being applied from all directions. This is what we are seeing now: the culmination of a multi-pronged strategy to dismember Sudan. Prendergast’s ties to the classified arena are unknown to us. And who is Roger Winter? He helped the Rwanda Patriotic Front overthrow the government of Rwanda, beginning as early as 1988, backed by the U.S. and U.K., using bases and logistical support, and with military advisers and troops, from Museveni and the Uganda People’s Defense Forces. Roger Winter is today running USAID programs in Sudan. Pentagon documents that discuss the U.S. military’s Africa Command, AFRICOM, indicate that USAID likely has some role as intelligence offshoot of the Pentagon.

The ABC’s of War in Uganda

And so we have this new ABC expose, which takes quite a different line. Now we find ABC revealing the true story, with a little obvious hesitation, and a lot of deception of its own, but reporting, nonetheless, that more than 1500 indigenous Acholi people are dying every week. ABC even cites a recent report about Northern Uganda by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), claiming that “approximately 1.2 million internally displaced persons—IDPs—reside in overcrowded camps where mortality rates remain above emergency levels, largely as a result of inadequate water availability, poor sanitary conditions, and the spread of diseases.”

“It’s a huge conspiracy of silence about the genocide which has been committed in northern Uganda,” ABC quotes Olara A. Otunnu, the former U.N. undersecretary-general and special representative for children and armed conflict, to say.

But if ABC is interested in exposing the truth, why have they censored so many of the comments from readers of the story? Hundreds of comments were deleted on the night of April 20, and hundreds more were deleted or blocked before and since.

Perhaps the answer can be found in the comments made by those whose posts were deleted. Here are some, the comments of this writer, which were copied by another ABC reader (before ABC found and deleted them) and sent back to their source.

The posts were made with a sense of hope, and trust, that ABC was concerned about the people of Uganda, and interested in doing the right thing.

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First post to ABC Blotter:
Posted by: keith harmon snow | May 20, 2007 11:50:49 PM

My deepest respect to the people who have taken it upon themselves to expose this nasty little secret kept by Uganda and its military allies, the United States, Britain and Israel.

First of all, it is about oil. It is also about gold, and if I look into it I assure you I will find other resources up for grabs. The oil concessions stretch along the border with Congo from the North Kivu Province, under Lake Albert—the Semliki basin—and up into northern Uganda.

The companies involved in exploiting the oil include HARDMAN and HERITAGE OIL & GAS. The Heritage connection is a guy named Tony Buckingham, who also is notable for his mercenary companies like SANDLINE INTERNATIONAL, and another nasty firm—BRANCH ENERGY. The oil concessions stretch from near the Rwanda border to the Red Sea—right smack through Darfur. You can see the oil maps on my web site. You can also search on HERITAGE—Uganda.

The U.S. is very close with Uganda, and ships in military equipment—paid for with AID and DEVELOPMENT funds—through Entebbe, an airbase [Uganda] refurbished by the U.S. Weapons and logistics and training go for the secret U.S. war in Sudan—DARFUR—and in Congo and, now, in Somalia. There are at least 2000 UPDF—UGANDA PEOPLES DEFENSE FORCES—in Somalia today prosecuting the war [there] with U.S. backing.

Anyone who claims that U.S. troops if they got involved would end up dead—what a bunch of nonsense. First of all, the Lords Resistance Army is not the main problem here it is the UPDF—as with their criminal operations looting Congo and backing the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army and now other factions in the war for Darfur. These are not in any sense “tribal” conflicts. Someone in the U.S. has deep ties to Joseph Kony and the LRA, and if they wanted this guy dead he would be dead long ago.

There are LRA agents in Washington connected at the highest levels. As long as Museveni—perhaps the worlds leading terrorist and war criminal today—right up there with his pal Paul Kagame from Rwanda—has these so-called ‘rebel’ so-called ‘enemies’ on its borders, like the ADF [Alliance of Democratic Forces] and LRA—then the Uganda government can continue to scream bloody murder “we need help” and continue to get AID, which is turned into weapons in what may be the world’s largest AID for ARMS scandal after the AID for ARMS scandal in Ethiopia.

This is an open policy of depopulation, the elimination of large numbers of human beings, as policy, to make way for resource extraction to benefit multinational corporations. It is an active policy intended to perpetuate despair, disease and death, and it is not reported because:

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