PART THIRTY SIX: A BILLION KALASHNIKOVS AND ONE NUKE
PART THIRTY SIX: A BILLION KALASHNIKOVS AND ONE NUKE
Well, this is a much broader post which paints a much clearer, and darker, picture of the world. We now see how Russia and the UIS operate, in particular in places like Pakistan and central Africa, where anarchy was already taking a foothold. While Pakistan holds a special place in the heart of Zhirinovsky (thanks to the Afghan war), Zaire represents a more broad and general world policy. And just in case you guys think Russian and Serb mercenaries is total ASB, keep in mind, this did happen in OTL! One of the most fascinating people in the Congolese Civil War was Jugoslav Petrusic, also known as Colonel Yugo. He was a war criminal who committed some terrible atrocities while in Zaire, who also was married to an African woman and had a child with her. He was a veteran of the Bosnian war, but worked with a large number of Bosnian and Croat mercenaries in Zaire. When all was said and done, this real life Bond villain was secretly working for the French government to prop up the regime of Mobutu Sese Seko. How Chirac avoided prosecution for this is beyond me, but in this timeline his role in supporting the mercenaries is simply to egregious to overlook and he is convicted of it. There is not a whole lot on Colonel Yugo online unless you speak or read Serbo-Croatian, but if you do a Google search on him you will find some fascinating stuff. 1997 was, in my opinion, a pivotal time in Africa with these numerous private military organizations like Executive Outcomes operating in countries like Sierra Leone and Congo. In OTL the failed Wonga Coup sort of brought these groups down (EO and Sandline both folded in 1998 and 2004 respectively) but here, with strong Russian support, these organizations not only flourish, but succeed (we see the Wonga Coup doesn’t fail, because rather than have to fly out of Zimbabwe, they are allowed to fly directly out of Zaire). But tragically, the cost is high with a Congolese Civil war that is even deadlier than the one in OTL and which drags on from 1997 to at least 2008. Some new names we will be introducing in this update:
The Kiev, a badly decrepit and soon to be decommissioned aircraft carrier in 1993 that has one last mission:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Kiev
Yuly Vorontsov
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuly_Vorontsov
Balochistan:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balochistan
Gwadar, a costal city in Pakistan that was sold to them by Oman in 1958:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwadar
The Boloch Liberation Front:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baloch_Liberation_Front
Baloch Liberation Front leader Jumma Marri:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumma_Khan_Marri
The Balochistan Liberation Army:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balochistan_Liberation_Army
Balach Marri, leader of the Balochistan Liberation Army:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balach_Marri
Mobuto opponent Étienne Tshisekedi of Zaire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89tienne_Tshisekedi
Nzanga Mobutu, son of former Zaire dictator Mobuto Sese Seko:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nzanga_Mobutu
Equatorial Guinea opposition leader Severo Moto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severo_Moto
British MP Charles Kennedy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kennedy
Some info on Colonel Yugo:
http://iwpr.net/report-news/alleged-assassins-were-no-strangers-france
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/03/19/world/serb-who-went-to-defend-zaire-spread-death-and-horror-instead.html
CNN interview with James Baker, former Secretary of State under President George H.W. Bush
July 13, 1997
CNN: You have been a critic of President Kerrey’s initial response to the former Soviet Union's expansionist policies in Eastern Europe, calling his first 100 days in office “the greatest failure of presidential foreign policy in modern American history.”
Baker: President Kerrey made some critical mistakes early on, and I think the end result was it let The UIS off the hook right when they were on the verge of collapsing.
CNN: Such as?
Baker: For one thing by letting China off the hook. Once China started to balk on sanctions he should have rallied the troops and got China back on board. Another thing was by not standing by Pakistan when the UIS decided to target Pakistan.
CNN: But he authorized over five billon dollars in aid to Pakistan in his first week as president, and also declared the Balochistan Liberation Front a terrorist organization.
Baker: And where did that money end up? In Afghanistan and Kashmir. The Pakistanis didn’t need money; they needed the US Navy to send a battleship and drive the
Kiev out of the Indian Ocean. We should have sought to end that second rate rebellion in the Gwadar enclave and get the UN in there before it turned into a disaster.
CNN: But the Pakistanis eventually crushed the Gwadar independence movement and regained control of the city despite the air support from the Russians and the
Kiev.
Baker: Yes, and then they proceeded to commit so many human rights violations that they single handedly revitalized the Balochistan Liberation Front. The Russians knew that the Pakistanis would overplay their hand, and as far as Vladimir Zhirinovsky was concerned, Pakistan was responsible for the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan. It was a special mission of his to destroy that country.
CNN: Is that why Pakistani troops were targeted in Somalia?
Baker: Yes. I read that General Lebed famously called Pakistan the “soft underbelly” of the UN. I don’t know if that is true, but Pakistan became the example that the UIS gave to the rest of the world. See how much western aid really matters when the Russians decide to destroy your country from the inside out.
CNN: You also called President Kerrey’s selection for your replacement as “a complete disaster”.
Baker (long pause): That was taken somewhat out of context. But I do feel that Walter Mondale was, quite simply, the wrong man for the job.
UIS Presidential Candidate Vladimir Putin in an interview with the BBC on August 1, 2011.
Discussing the UIS’s support of the Balochistan Liberation Front and the targeting of Pakistani peacekeepers in Somalia by UIS sponsored rebels.
BBC: You claimed that General Lebed personally gave the order to send the UIS warship
Kiev to Gwadar in January of 1993 and that he, not Vladimir Zhirinovsky, instructed pro-UIS elements of the Somali opposition to target Pakistani troops.
Putin: Correct. General Lebed realized that the sanctions were castrating the nation and unless we got them lifted, the country would implode before the summer.
BBC: But to send a Russian aircraft carrier to the Indian Ocean? Couldn’t that have provoked the Pakistanis into shooting at it or even sinking it? Wouldn’t that have resulted in a tremendous loss of prestige?
Putin: It was a chance we had to take. But Lebed, and even President Zhirinovsky, felt that Pakistan was ripe for the taking. It barely had control of its western provinces and basically had no control of the north-west territories bordering Afghanistan. If we could cause Pakistan to implode before we did, we would show the rest of the world that American aid was ultimately worthless. If we accomplished that, well, in such an instance we could cause the sanctions to collapse.
BBC: So in a sense it was a success?
Putin: For the UIS it was. Obviously for countries like Pakistan and Zaire it was not. But at the end of the day Lebed and Zhirinovsky were on the same page about one thing: the arms race of the USSR and the USA destroyed the Soviet Union and we couldn’t hope to keep that up. But Zhirinovsky realized something that many of the old guard didn’t. The west had become so rich and so successful that they had grown soft. We didn’t need to have the ground forces to match the American forces, or even the nuclear weapons to match theirs. All we needed was a billion Kalashnikov’s and one nuke aimed at New York and that would be enough to wage a new kind of cold war against the West. When all was said and done, the sanctions collapsed because for all the promises of aid money from the West, one thing frightened these countries more than anything else. And it was something we understood very well: they feared a rebellion.
Islamists seize northern Pakistani city, at least 133 dead as Pakistani troops flee breakaway province of Balochistan
By Sergio Marquez (Toronto Globe and Mail) –January 27, 2002
Quetta after Pakistan troops fled the city
QUETTA — After fighting the Pakistani military for nearly ten years in an attempt to establish an independent Bloch republic in western Pakistan, soldiers of the Balochistan Liberation Front appear poised to finally realize their dream as the city of Quetta fell yesterday just two days after a coup drove Pakistani prime minister Malik Meraj Khalid out of office. After a fierce firefight in the center of Quetta left over one hundred Pakistani soldiers dead, government troops withdrew from the capital city and retreated to Islamabad. The military-backed coup was widely seen as a direct result of American sanctions that had been levied against Pakistan for its refusal to assist in the invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11th terrorist attacks in New York, Washington, and Moscow.
“Pakistani troops have withdrawn from Quetta temporarily,” newly announced chief executive Pervez Musharraf said on Pakistani television, “but we will regroup and regain control of the Baloch province shortly.”
However, independent observers question the likelihood of Pakistan ever regaining control of Balochistan, noting that over the course of the previous nine years the province continued to descend into a state of anarchy as the central government withdrew from Gwadar and Turbat. Although most international observers feel that Musharraf will attempt to repair relations with the United States, the sanctions are believed to have devastated the military capabilities of the Pakistani government.
“The Baloch Liberation Front exposed the great myth of Pakistani nationhood,” former UIS ambassador Yuli Mikhailovich Vorontsov told the BBC in an interview, “Pakistan is not a nation but an occupier that has spread discontent and misery to all of her neighbors and to those minorities living within her borders.”
Although the UIS has already recognized the independence of Balochistan in 1994, many Pakistanis fear that the loss of Quetta will prompt other nations to formally recognize the independence of the breakaway province.
Eerie calm as fear descends upon Quetta
With the central government formally driven from the city, members of the Balochistan Liberation Front began rounding up “enemies” of the state in what the Red Crescent and Amnesty International have already called “a dangerous indication of planned human rights violations.” The BLF arrested the Pakistani mayor of Quetta, and also detained over 100 soldiers as well as dozens of government employees. However, perhaps most troubling were early indications that the shaky cease fire between the BLF and the rival Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) was about to collapse now that the Pakistanis were driven out. The BLF was a staunch ally of Moscow and condemned the actions of the Taliban in Afghanistan, while the BLA was seen as more closely allied with the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
“There are early indications that, despite this victory by the BLF, stability in Balochistan will not emerge,” a representative for Amnesty International told reporters, “we are very worried about the persecution of the Pashto population in Quetta.”
BLF leader Jumma Khan Marri has indicated that, although he will not target the Pashtu minority in Balochistan, he “will not let terrorists use our nation as a safe haven as had been the case under the Pakistanis.”
Zairian recounts torture by Serb and Russian mercenaries during Zaire’s devastating civil war
October 13, 1997
By Terry Higgins - CNN
Yugo posing with a government troop
(KISANGANI, ZAIRE) - Standing in a refugee camp in Congo, Daniel Nwanatabwe recalled the horrors of being held captive by Serb and Russian mercenaries paid for by his country’s leaders.
“We heard about the Tutsis coming in from Rwanda,” Nwanatabwe said softly, “but we didn’t think it would involve us. We had nothing to do with the Hutus and Tutsis.”
However, as rebel leader Laurent-Désiré Kabila’s forces routed Zairian forces in the early days of the conflict, Nwanatabwe realized that his city of over half a million would soon be thrust into the front lines.
“We kept expecting reinforcements to come from Kinshasa,” Nwanatabwe recalled, “but when they did they simply sacked the city before fleeing into the jungle. Over thirty years of corruption and mismanagement from Mobutu had taken a toll.”
However, with a defeat clearly looming, the widely despised Zairian president made perhaps his most controversial decision: to hire the Russians. The Russian mercenaries were part of the innocuous sounding International Strategic Resource Group, an army of mercenaries that amounted to a Russian foreign legion in Africa. However, prior to the Zairian Civil War, they were perhaps best known as a subcontractor for the South African based mercenary outfit Executive Outcomes.
“They had made their presence known in Africa over the last six years with limited engagements in Somalia and Sierra Leone,” former American ambassador Robert Oakley said of the group recently, “but now they have really upped the ante. Their presence in Zaire has completely changed everything in Africa, with Zaire now parroting whatever Moscow tells them to say at the UN while Moscow plunders Zaire much like the Belgians did one hundred years ago.”
The comparison to the Belgians is not without merit, especially with men like Nwanatabwe.
“We saw them arrive in helicopters,” Nwanatabwe said, “one thousand Russian and Serbian mercenaries. And as soon as they landed they began the terror.”
The troops, led by noted Serbian war criminal Jugoslav Petrusic, who operated under the nom de guerre of Colonel Yugo Dominik, immediately rounded up suspected rebel sympathizers, which appeared to Nwanatabwe to be anyone young enough to fight.
“He knew that we all hated Mobutu,” Nwanatabwe said, “everyone in Zaire did. So he treated us all as if we were rebel sympathizers and began rounding us up.”
Nwanatabwe recalled the day he was arrested, even though he was never told what he was charged with.
“I was walking down the street when suddenly a Russian saw me and ran up to me with his AK-47,” Nwanatabwe recalled, “I knew he’d shoot me if I ran so I just stood there hoping he’d see I wasn’t resisting. But he hit me in the face with his rifle butt and knocked me unconscious.”
Colonel Yuko’s reign of terror continued for ten days, until the rebels laid siege to the city. Although it at first looked like the city would fall despite the presence of the mercenaries, the assault was repelled when rebel leader Kabila was killed by a sniper.
“After that the rebellion just sort of fell apart,” Nwanatabwe said, “The rebels pulled back to eastern Zaire and began fighting between themselves.”
A power struggle between Jean-Pierre Bemba, who was backed by Rwanda, and Ernest Wamba dia Wamba, who was backed by Uganda, destroyed the opposition and even the alliance between Rwanda and Uganda. As Rwanda and Uganda inched closer to war, the Serbs and Russians succeeded in solidifying control over western Zaire, aided by an unexpected stroke of luck.
“When Mobutu died in September it took a lot of energy out of the opposition,” Nwanatabwe said, “he was the face of the devil to us, and now that he was dead, most Zairians lost the will to fight. For us the struggle was now over.”
The death of the dictator in September in his Kinshasa presidential mansion and the subsequent appointment of popular opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi as new president (allegedly by the International Strategic Resource Group) calmed tensions in Zaire and gave some legitimacy to the new administration.
“It was funny, because at that point the government began calling for all foreign troops to leave the country,” Nwanatabwe recalled, “they said that eastern Zaire was occupied by Ugandan and Rwandan troops. But those of us in Kisangani knew better. Maybe eastern Zaire was occupied by Africans, but central Zaire was occupied by Russians.”
Initially the Russians and Serbs eased the grip they held on the city, releasing all of the prisoners in hopes that the population would rally behind the popular Tshisekedi. But for Nwanatabwe, he had seen enough from the Slavs.
“They tortured me every night I was in jail,” Nwanatabwe said, “and when they emptied the jail, only 108 of us were left. There were over 500 prisoners there, but only 100 walked out. It was obvious what happened.”
Nwanatabwe fled to the capital city of Kinshasa with his family before fleeing across the Congo River to neighboring Congo.
“What I saw in Kinshasa terrified me,” Nwanatabwe recalled, “the presidential palace was under guard of the Russians, and they were not letting anyone in or out. The new president was under house arrest!”
Since taking office in September, President Tshisekedi has not yet been seen in public, nor has he given any interviews with the foreign media. Perhaps most noteworthy is the steady stream of government officials who, despite technically being in control of the country, are defecting en masse. Perhaps most noteworthy was when newly appointed UN ambassador Nzanga Mobutu, son of the late dictator, sought asylum in the United States as soon as he arrived in New York, claiming that the International Strategic Resource Group had turned his country into a virtual fiefdom.
“What is happening right now in Zaire is the most troubling development in the African continent since colonialism,” Ambassador Oakley said, “and what is most troubling is that all the early indications are that the International Strategic Resource Group now is looking to expand their presence into other African nations as well.”
Chirac, former French president, convicted in corruption trial
BBC
January 22, 2008
Chirac, seen leaving the courthouse after being convicted
(PARIS) Yesterday afternoon, in front of a packed courtroom, Jacques Chirac became the first former president of France to be convicted on criminal charges after he was found guilty of corruption, embezzlement, tampering with evidence, and perjury. The convictions stem from his role in ordering his administration to illegally funnel millions of dollars to help former Zairian president Mobutu Sese Seko maintain power in the early months of that country’s civil war. It was alleged that the money, which violated French sanctions on both Zaire and the UIS, ultimately had been used to hire a group of Russian and Serbian mercenaries which repelled the Rwandan and Ugandan backed rebels in late 1997. However, the “victory” came at a steep cost to the country. Since 1997 the country has become a virtual puppet state of the Union of Independent States. The UIS has used Zaire as a base to overthrow regimes in Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone as well as Equatorial Guinea. In Equatorial Guinea, British and Russian mercenaries ousted longtime dictator Teodoro Obiang in April of 2000.
Chirac is facing a maximum jail sentence of 18 years, although it is suspected that he would not have to serve any actual jail time. However, French prosecutors have indicated that more charges of corruption, connected to his time as mayor of Paris, will be filed against the former president.
in the US...the US isn't going to be ending sanctions any time soon, no matter what other nations may do.
