Milton Allimadi on Uganda, Rwanda, and Uganda's 2011 Election

Milton Allimadi, Ugandan American
Editor of the New York City-based
Black Star News.

On Saturday, 02.14, I spoke to Ugandan American Black Star News Editor Milton Allimadi, about Uganda's February 18th election for KPFA News and Afrobeat Radio, about whether or not Ugandan might follow Egypt after the February 18th polls that no one expects to be free or fair.   That link is posted here on AfrobeatRadio.net, and this is a recording of our extended conversation, touching on:

- the European Union's election observers' mission,

- the Rwanda Genocide and the Acholi Genocide in Northern Uganda,

- the threat of war between Rwanda and Uganda, a backdrop to the Ugandan election, and, one possible explanation of the high level visit by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg and UnderSecretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson.

Allies of the U.S., enemies of each other.  There
is considerable unease that Rwandan President
Paul Kagame and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni,
will go to war after Uganda's February 18th 
election, assuming Museveni remains in office.

KPFA Weekend News: Uganda the next Egypt?

KPFA Weekend News, 02.12.2011:

KPFA Weekend News Anchor David Rosenberg:  One of Uganda's three leading opposition presidential candidates, and others, predict that Uganda could become the next Egypt or Tunisia after next Friday's presidential and parliamentary elections, which few expect to be free or fair.   Ann Garrison has more.

KPFA/Ann Garrison:  Last week the world watched Egyptians in the streets of Cairo, and heard voices of the Egyptian revolution on radio, TV, Facebook, Twitter, the blogosphere, and elsewhere on the Internet. They included the voice of this Egyptian street protestor, which nearly two million people have now heard on the Youtube alone:

Egyptian Street Protestor:  We will not be silenced.  Whether you are Christian, whether you are Muslim, or whether you are an atheist, you will demand your goddamn rights, and we will have our rights, one way or the other.  We will never be silenced.

KPFA:  Milton Allimadi, Ugandan American editor of the New York City-based Black Star News says that Egypt's uprising was really a global uprising, with scenes beamed all around the world, and both Egyptians and Mubarak well aware that the rest of the world was watching.   Allimadi also agrees with Dr. Kizza Besigye that Uganda could be next.

He spoke to KPFA from New York City:

Milton Allimadi:  This should be seen as a sequence of events now, so the world will see this as interconnected.  Egypt was seen as connected with Tunisia, so I see this as a possibility in Uganda as well.  Ugandans are very savy; they're very sophisticated consumers of news and they watched developments in both Tunisia and Egypt very carefully.

KPFA:  The majority of Ugandans are subsistence farmers.  Do you have an idea of what kind of media and Internet access they have?

Milton Allimadi:  The majority of Egyptians are subsistence farmers as well, but the people that are connected to Facebook, the Internet, and to Twitter, live in the large cities such as Cairo.  The same applies to Uganda.  The sophisticated Internet consumers of news live in cities such as Kampala, Entebbe, Jinja, Gulu, Mbarara, Masaka, and these are the ones that would likely show their protest in these urban areas and that's where it counts.

KPFA:  So you think that, if there is an uprising, it will take place in the cities?

Milton Allimadi:  Absolutely; these kinds of uprisings invariably take part in the cities.  That's where most international, as well as local, media, are focussed and concentrated.    And, in Uganda, I think there's a sense by international media that this is a ground changing election, because the BBC, which has traditionally been very apologetic and sympathetic to President Museveni, has now for the first time deployed a major contingent of reporters inside Uganda, so the coverage is going to be very different and very significant this time around.

KPFA:  Do you know of any effort to block the news and or the Internet?

Milton Allimadi:  Not yet, but there may be plans to do that come election time.  And I know there are many organizations inside and outside Uganda who are working on setting up alternative networks to be able to disseminate information.

KPFA:  U.S. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Under Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson flew into Kampala, Uganda last week to meet with Uganda's three leading opposition presidential candidates, Kizza Besigye, Norbert Mao, and Olara Otunnu, all of whom told them that Friday's elections will not be free and fair.  Steinberg and Carson then went on to meet with Ugandan President Yoweri Museven, who has been one of the U.S.A.'s closest allies and military collaborators since the end of the Cold War. Before leaving, Steinberg gave a speech at Kampala's Makerere University about the importance of free and fair elections, and protecting human rights for all, regardless of race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.

For a longer version of this interview with Milton Allimadi and for ongoing updates on Uganda's election, see the websites of the San Francisco Bay View and AfrobeatRadio.net.

For Pacifica/KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I'm Ann Garrison.

AfrobeatRadio Special on the Southern Sudanese Referendum on Independence

Rev. Dr. Nikita Imani, Associate
Professor of Sociology at James
Madison University and ordained
minister in both the Baptist and
African Orthodox Churches spoke to
Afrobeat Radio about the Southern
Sudanese Referendum.

Are peace and self-determination possible for the Sudanese people, despite troops amassing in both north and the south, and vast oil wealth, concentrated in the South and coveted by competitive foreign powers? Ann Garrison reports on Sudan Referendum January Sat 8, on WBAI 99.5 FM NY, streaming live @ WBAI.Org at 4:00 PM EST. Guests: Mugume D. Rwakaringi, Rev. Dr. Nikita Imani, Peter Erlinder, Milton Allimadi.

Audio link:  http://www.anngarrison.com/images/mp3s/afrobeatequalized.mp3.

Voting began in Southern Sudan on their referendum on independence began on January 9, 2011.

KPFA News, 08.22.2010: Ugandan mercenary recruits in Iraq

Also playable and postable, as an audio here: http://goo.gl/VaL9.

Transcript:

KPFA News Host Anthony Fest:

Earlier this week  the Pentagon proclaimed that the last U.S. combat forces had left Iraq.  This after an armored unit drove out of the country and crossed the border into Kuwait.  However, there'll still be 50,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.  An Iraq veteran turned war critic, Camillo Mejia, said that 4,000 U.S. troops who are leaving Iraq will be replaced by 7,000 employees of private military contractors.  Other observers say the U.S. has long outsourced the Iraq occupation to troops from some of the world's poor nations, such as Uganda, Angola, India, and Bangladesh, and that many of the mercenaries due to replace other U.S. troops will also come from those countries, especially from Uganda.   KPFA's Ann Garrison has the story. 

Ann Garrison for KPFA News:

The New York City-based Black Star News publishes many critics of U.S. foreign policy in Africa and Black Star's Ugandan American Editor Milton Allimadi is among the most outspoken critics of U.S. use of Ugandan mercenaries, elsewhere in Africa and in Iraq.  

Black Star News Editor Milton Allimadi:

This is not surprising.  It's a disturbing development and something needs to be done to really stop this because Ugandans are being victimized by the dictator, Yoweri Museveni, and now, in collusion with the United States government.  

And another reason why this is very disturbing:    

It's an extension of what the U.S. has been doing for a couple of years now with respect to Uganda---outsourcing of torture of people interdicted by the United States to Uganda.  And this was well documented in a report by Human Rights Watch that has not garnered sufficient attention.  

The report is called Open Secret; Illegal Detention and Torture by the Joint Anti-Terrorism Task Force in Uganda.  It was published last year, April 8 and 2009, and it says that the United States provided not only training, but also $5 million dollars for Ugandan security agents to torture individuals detained in Uganda, which is illegal according to the Leahy Amendment, an amendment by Senator Patrick Leahy, which prohibits U.S. cooperation or funding or training for any government that is torturing its individuals or committing human rights abuse.  

It needs to be investigated by the Senate and by Congress.  

KPFA News:

Black Star News contributor Michael Kirkpatrick has traveled in Northern Uganda, the war torn home of the indigenous Acholi people, and written about Blackwater, Dreshak and KBR's recruitment in refugee camps, otherwise known as Internally Displaced Persons, or IDP camps, which he first observed in 2007.  

Black Star News Contributor Michael Kirkpatrick: 

Back in 2007, I traveled to Northern Uganda at the invitation of some Acholi friends of mine.  This was an opportunity for me to see how that part of the country was rebuilding after a 20-yr. rebel insurgency.  While I was there, I met a young woman who was there from the British High Commission, and she was studying a local language, in the city of Gulu, which is the largest city in Northern Uganda.   And she was there to learn this obscure tribal African language because she needed to train translators in Iraq.  Well, I thought this was odd, that the Acholi language was being spoken in Iraq.  Well here what I learned was that there were Acholi, young Acholi men, being recruited by military contractors to go to Iraq and they obviously needed translators because these young men did not speak English, so they needed translators in Iraq to be able to instruct and direct these military contractor employees.     

I've come to learn even since then that the recruitment of Ugandans is a very common practice by these military contractors.  There are a lot of things going on in East Africa that require the U.S. presence there.  And currently, right now, there are recruiting stations in the capitol city of Kampala and there are regularly long lines of Ugandans waiting to get jobs.  

For Ugandans, this isn't an act of fighting Al Qaeda.  This isn't an act of justice or spreading democracy in the Middle East.  For them it is purely an economic issue.  They need the jobs; they need the money.  From my point of view, we are exploiting a desperate people. We're bribing them with money to carry weapons into a war that is not theirs.  

KPFA News:

Recruiting stations are private military contractors' stations or they are U.S. military? 

Michael Kirkpatrick:

They are private. They are not U.S. military.  They are not manned or stationed by U.S. military.  But believe me, the U.S. military is paying their bills. 

KPFA News: 

Kirkpatrick also says that private, for profit companies do not have to report casualties, or open their accounting books to anyone.  His report on the use of Ugandan mercenaries to replace U.S. troops leaving Iraq will be available on the Black Star News website later this week.  For Pacifica, KPFA Radio, I'm Ann Garrison. 

Immigration's impact on democracy: Milton Allimadi and the Black Star News

Passport photo of Milton Allimadi, a Ugandan American graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the Editor and Publisher of the Black Star News in New York City.

Milton Allimadi, in his investigative news journal, the Black Star News, offers an unusual forum for reporting on Africa, which is so little known to most Americans, including even African Americans, because there's so little coverage of Africa in the dominant American press, and what little there is is superficial or misleading.  

Allimadi's recent piece, "Will Obama Administration screw Africa, like all the rest?" compared the struggle for civil and political rights in Africa to those of the American South during the 1960s: 

This is abominable and harkens to the days when, here in the United States, elections used to be held in the Southern States while Black voters were either barred from voting, being lynched, being "disappeared," or showered with water cannons.

After reading this essay, I finished editing a radio interview for Womens International News Gathering Service, with Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza, the FDU-Inkingi presidential candidate whom Paul Kagame arrested and prevented from entering Rwanda’s 2010 presidential race, which is now heading into its sham conclusion in Aug. 9 “polls.”

I had to type up and read Victoire’s final statement, because my telephonic internet connection to her in Rwanda failed at the very end, so I introduced it, with Milton Allimadi's words in mind, by noting that it's reminiscent of the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the peace movement that was so much more active then than now:

"I want to be a leader of all Rwandans seeking political change which can help us overcome ethnic division, and embrace a new vision where people are judged on the basis of what they contribute to the welfare of their  country and not which party, racial, or ethnic group they belong to.  

I dream for a Rwanda where people gather around ideas and not ethnicity, a country respected for its value and not its military might."

As I did so, it occurred to me that Milton Allimadi and his Black Star News are examples of exactly what the Colored Opinions, the blog, was created to explore: the impact of migration on democracy.   In his case, it's a very positive impact.  The Black Star News, like the San Francisco Bay View, National Black Newspaper, and Global Research, is one of the few news sources that regularly features African voices, and news and analysis of the Pentagon's militarization of Africa, its use of African proxy warriors, and the foreign scramble for African resources, including not only oil, but also cropland, timber, hydropower, and the mineral wealth essential to modern manufacture for war.