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“Those Cuban-CIA men (Bay of Pigs vets) were as tough, dedicated and impetuous a group of soldiers as I’ve ever had the honor of commanding,” wrote legendary anti-communist mercenary “Mad Mike” Hoare, commander of the “Wild Geese,” in his book Congo Mercenary. ''This is the history of a failure,'' said the oddly frank opening lines of Che Guevara’s Congo Dairies. “I stood above Che Guevara, my boots near his head, just as Che had once stood over my dear friend and fellow 2506 Brigade member, Nestor Pino. ‘We're going to kill you all," Che said to Pino.’ Now, the situation...

Nearly 80 percent of the equipment for staging the December 23 election in DR Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, was destroyed when a fire ripped through a warehouse, as violence flared just 10 days before the vote. The blaze, which officials blamed on arson, was the latest drama of an increasingly tense election campaign ahead of the December 23 election when the country will choose a successor to President Joseph Kabila. Also Thursday, a teenager was shot dead in the central Kasai region as party faithful gathered ahead of a rally by Felix Tshisekedi of the UDPS, one of the leading opposition...

This week Nikki Haley, our ambassador to the United Nations, visits two countries on the brink of becoming the world’s next failed states: South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Her trip comes as optimism for South Sudan has faded as the six-year-old nation, famously “midwifed” into existence by the Obama administration, has sunk into a civil war between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, and his former vice president, Riek Machar, a Nuer. The conflict has generated the biggest exodus of civilians in the continent since the Rwandan genocide of...

A little known Swedish-Canadian oil and mining conglomerate human rights groups have repeatedly charged produces “blood minerals” is among the Clinton Foundation’s biggest donors, thanks to a ($100 million pledge) in 2007, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found.“Blood minerals” are related to “blood diamonds,” which are allegedly mined in war zones or sold as commodities to help finance political insurgencies or despotic warlords. When the Vancouver, Canada-based Lundin Group gave its $100 million commitment to the “Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative,” the company had long been cutting deals with warlords, Marxist rebels, military strongmen and dictatorships in the...

We've had our moments when power changed hands in the United States. There was Jimmy Carter's cold shoulder to Ronald Reagan, the Bush v. Gore decision and, of course, the removal of the Ws from the keyboards by Clinton staffers when George W. Bush prevailed. But once the election is over, the votes have been counted and, in a few cases, the courts have ruled, the loser steps aside and the winner takes over. The new president's appointees replace those of his predecessor. No one tries to hang on. No one tries to extend the term. It's not that way...

Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi is well known now for the abuses he has inflicted on his own people during more than four decades of brutal rule in Libya, but few remember the vast campaign of carnage and terrorism he orchestrated across West Africa and Europe when he was at the height of his powers. Nor are his more recent alliance with Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and his long-standing relationship with Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua -- both of whom are busy trampling their constitutions and moving toward dictatorship -- well understood. And the fact that all three governments support the Revolutionary Armed...

President Bush met with President Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo this morning in the Oval Office. (Transcript) Later, in the White House Roosevelt Room, President Bush again urged Democrats to stop dragging their feet and send him an appropriations bill: “October the 26th is the latest date in 20 years that Congress has failed to get a single annual appropriations bill to the President's desk.” The president also spoke about the overall incompetence of this Congress, mentioning their continued efforts to expand SCHIP (the House has passed a second and even more expensive bill than the...

Saddam's Shadow Africa Energy & Mining June 18, 1997 Copyright 1997 Indigo Publications Africa Energy & Mining June 18, 1997 SECTION: MINING; DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO; N. 207 LENGTH: 787 words HEADLINE: Saddam's Shadow BODY: It's not only diamonds and base metals that interest big mining companies and the latter are not alone in being interested in Katanga. In the delegation that the United States sent to Kinshasa on June 2 under its ambassador to the United Nations, Bill Richardson, the state department's African affairs department was represented by Marc Baas, director for Central Africa. (Susan Rice, director for African...

KINSHASA, Congo (AP) -- The U.N. said Monday it had launched a military operation to rescue foreign diplomats inside the besieged home of a Congo presidential candidate.

Al-Qaida 'bought uranium' in Congo Friday 14 November 2003, 19:18 Makka Time, 16:18 GMT Bin Ladin's network alleged to have 'dirty bomb' capability Related: Al-Qaida threatens more attacks Saudi regime v al-Qaida: Only one survives Tools: Email Article Print Article Send Your Feedback An al-Qaida representative bought enriched uranium capable of being used in a so-called dirty bomb from the Congolese opposition in 2000, according to a French newspaper report. In sworn testimony an unnamed former soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has told investigators looking into the murders of two Congolese opposition figures in France in December...

SHINKOLOBWE, Congo (AP) - Business is booming in the mining zone that supplied uranium for the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - despite a decree by Congo's president banning all mining activity here. President Joseph Kabila ordered the zone closed three months ago amid growing concerns that unregulated nuclear materials could get into the hands of so-called rogue nations or terrorist groups. Yet 1,000 miles away from the capital, Kinshasa, thousands of diggers are still hacking away at a dark cavity of open earth in this southeastern village, filling thousands of burlap sacks a day with black soil...

Congo The battle lines are redrawn, again Jun 10th 2004 | BUKAVU From The Economist print edition Though the rebels have withdrawn, they haven't given up on war THE Congolese rebels made no apology for their murder, rape and pillage. But, as they withdrew this week from Bukavu, eastern Congo's biggest town, they did concede that their week-long occupation of it had been a “mistake”. Their leader, Brigadier-General Laurent Nkunda, said he had been “mis-led” into thinking that the national army had been massacring Congolese members of his own Tutsi ethnic group in Bukavu. With that, General Nkunda's columns of...

The vast, mutilated African state of Congo is enjoying a ceasefire but butchery and theft continue apace while the West remains inactive reports Adrian Blomfield in Aru Nine-year-old Bahati lies on the ground whimpering, a urine stain slowly darkening the front of his baggy camouflage trousers. Two boys, perhaps three or four years older and also dressed in military uniform, stand over his body clutching bamboo canes in their hands. A boy soldier in the eastern Congo They look across at "General Jerome", a former traffic warden who now heads the Armed Forces of Congolese Patriots, or FAPC, one of...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked Security Council members on Friday to urgently consider a rapid reaction force of about 1,000 troops for the eastern Congo where fighting has left hundreds dead and thousands of people homeless and hungry. In a letter to the 15-member council, Annan said he believed the situation around the town of Bunia in the Ituri region could worsen even though a truce was signed in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, on Friday among the warring parties and Congo President Joseph Kabila.France offered to send troops but only if other countries, like Britain, joined...

KIGALI, Rwanda - Hundreds of civilians were killed and hundreds more were missing after Congolese rebels allied with the government seized a key town in northeastern Congo and launched a two-day campaign of murder, rape, looting and destruction, a rival rebel leader said Saturday. Thomas Lubanga, head of the Union of Congolese Patriots, or UPC, said at least 400 people were killed on Feb. 24-25 and 500 were missing after his troops were pushed from the strategic town of Bogoro during an attack by the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy-Liberation Movement, or RCD-ML, and allied Lendu tribal militiamen. Both groups...

By William Maclean KINSHASA, April 30 (Reuters) - A U.N. Security Council mission opened closed-door talks with Congo's President Joseph Kabila on Tuesday to revive efforts to end Africa's biggest war after the main rebel group rejected a partial peace deal as a sham. The team of 15 diplomats from the world's top security body was led into talks with Kabila by delegation leader Jean-David Levitte, France's U.N. ambassador. Government officials told reporters Kabila would issue a comprehensive statement on the peace process after the talks with the U.N. team, which will also visit Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda....

JOHANNESBURG, April 20 — The collapse of peace talks to end Africa's biggest war in the Democratic Republic of Congo could doom the former Zaire to prolonged conflict or even partition, analysts warned on Saturday. Worse still, they said, the crisis in the mineral-rich state would re-ignite tensions and probably more direct fighting between neighbours Rwanda and Uganda, who each support rival rebel factions in Africa's third largest country. On the economic front, failure to achieve peace in Congo would stunt economic development and deter badly-needed foreign investment in poverty-stricken and war-ridden Africa. Talks to end the war and chart...