Charles Taylor and his CIA pals
Posted by By Akogun Akomolafe at 27 September, at 12 : 00 PM Print
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So, finally the Imperialists Criminal Court (ICC), aka International Criminal Court, finally confirmed the fifty-year jail term slapped on former Liberian warlord, turned president, Charles Taylor.
Effectively, Mr. Taylor will spend the rest of his life in jail.
Why I was not surprised. I reprint here below what I wrote when Mr. Taylor was jailed.
When conscious Africans blast the New Imperialists for their continual destabilization of our beloved continent, their rented journalists and quislings in our midst always jump to their defense.
They questioned why we keep blaming our continent’s woes on foreigners. They tell us to grow up and blame our greedy bastards of leaders.
They remind us that the Asians were also colonized and they (Asians) have today dusted off the yoke of colonialism, rebuild their lives while we remained mired in poverty, misery, and want.
They ask why, after fifty years of self-governance, we still face the same development challenges our fathers face.
The apologists are clever but dishonest.
Any analysis that failed to consider the role (past and present) of European intrusion in Africa in the contemporary mess the continent presently face is plainly wrong.
To begin with, modern African is a creation of European imperialism.
Apart from Ethiopia, all the modern nations of Africa are artificial creations totally bereft of geographic, historic, logical and economic sense.
They make only imperial logic.
Another falsity is the argument that the colonialist granted independence to their colonies.
Except for colonies that actually fought for their independence, what happened in Africa can be best described as ‘Mickey Mouse,’ independence.
We must also dismiss the notion that there was a time when the European intruders actually packed their bags and left us alone to live our lives as we deemed fit.
In most cases, as Oginga Odinga informed us, trusted heirs of imperialism were simply promoted to positions of power and authority to ensure that the imperial powers continue to enjoy the fruits of imperialism, but without the naked display of imperialism with the attendant opprobrium directed at it.
We need to ask how any honest commentator, African or foreigner, could read excerpts from the Colonial Pact France signed with its colonies and conclude that Franco-phone Africa is independent.
How could any honest analyst read about the shenanigans of the British in what is today Nigeria and tell us that the current crises bedeviling the country should not be blamed (at least partly) on the colonialists?
Today, Nigeria is mired in an inter-tribal and religious conflagration, and we have supposedly brilliant analysts refusing to configure the system and the institutions that the British erected, to ensure that what they left behind in Nigeria was a dangerous powder keg that was bound to blow up sooner or later.
For those not in the know, the British colonialists left a Nigeria where state power was transferred to the most feudal of the conservative elements of the Northern Nigerian elite.
They ensured this by leaving behind a Nigeria with a census figure that proclaimed that arid northern region is more populated than the rain forest of southern Nigeria. The British left behind a Nigeria where northerners (who served as the Colonialists shock-troopers) dominated the security services.
The reasons are simple: the British colonialists felt more comfortable with the Northerner feudalist, and so did everything possible to transfer power to them, and put in place the structures necessary to maintain that usurped and illegitimate power.
Attempt to resolve these imbalances have resulted in numerous coups, civil war and the now Boko Haram menace by those that say they want to turn Nigeria into an Islamic State.
The saddest part is that whilst the African apologists of imperialism are very vociferous in their defense of their masters, honest Western commentators do not try to defend the indefensible.
There is abundant literature on the evil mischiefs the imperialist continue to perpetrate in Africa, but it looks like the African apologists for imperialism don’t bother to read much.
Honest commentators like John Stockwell clinically chronicled the role imperialist’s agencies like the CIA played in so-called civil wars across Africa.
Mr. Stockwell did not write fiction; he wrote firsthand accounts of what he and other agents of imperialism did to destabilize countries across the world.
Rather than read Mr. Stockwell’s classic ‘In Search of Enemies,’ African apologists of imperialism would rather gather their facts from the CNN and BBC.
Another operator who called himself, The Economic Hitman, whose conscience finally pricked him, recently told us about the sordid deeds he perpetrated across the world in the defense of western imperialism.
Yet, commentators who expect to be taken seriously lament when we blame imperialism for some of our woes.
Again, take the case of the so-called civil war that destroyed the Republic of Liberia.
At the onset of the conflict, I wrote a piece that questioned how a convicted criminal could escape from prison the United States of America (of all places) with enough cash to start a war in Liberia.
Charles Ghankay Taylor, a former head of Liberia’s General Services Administration under Samuel Doe, had fled to the United States in 1983 after he was accused of embezzling money.
According to the tale, he not only escaped from prison but was able to get out of the United States with enough cash to start a major war in West Africa.
He resurfaced later in West Africa and started a war that was very brutal in its ferocity. The objective of Charles Taylor’s war was murky enough. It was a war without a discernible ideology or philosophy underpinning it. Many believed that it was launched by Liberians of the African-American stock, who believe Liberia to be their personal fiefdom, and were affronted by the Samuel Kanyon Doe coup that toppled their elitist regime in 1980.
In the intricate and foggy world of intelligence, Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPLF) were supported by the Americans, the Libyans (under Brother Moammar Ghadaffi), the Ivorians and the Burkinabes.
Charles Taylor a very brutal warlord shot his way into the Liberian presidency and was treated with high protocol until he ran afoul of his Americans sponsors.
Again the reasons for the fallout are sketchy, but Charles Taylor forces were believed to have killed some American citizens. He thus incurred the ire of the Americans who hitherto had looked unconcerned at his atrociously tyrannical rule. The Americans start to gun for his head; the rest they say is history.
Liberia lay devastated, its infrastructures are ruined and its people traumatized.
Today, a puppet president, who does not speak any of Liberia’s indigenous languages, sits in the Presidential Palace in Monrovia busily making Liberia safe for the imperialist vultures. With her sons and family members embedded at most strategic offices in the land, Madam has ensured that large tracts of Liberian famed forests are being sold for peanuts. Liberian mineral resources are being sold for a song.
Who today benefit from the so-called civil war in Liberia? These are the questions patriotic Africans ought to ask ourselves.
It is only in Africa we think that things ‘just happen.’ Any Westerner will tell you that things, especially geopolitical things, are planned and always well-crafted.
President Harry Truman put it correctly when he said that “In politics, nothing happens by chance; everything is planned.”
Today, the Americans are gradually releasing details of their complicity in the devastation of Liberia.
According to a recent Myjoyonline news report: ”US authorities say former Liberian leader Charles Taylor worked for its intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the Boston Globe reports.
The revelation comes in response to a Freedom of Information request by the newspaper.
A Globe reporter told the BBC this is the first official confirmation of long-held reports of a relationship between US intelligence and Mr. Taylor. Mr. Taylor is awaiting a verdict on his trial for alleged war crimes.
Rumors of CIA ties were fuelled in July 2009 when Mr. Taylor himself told his trial, at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague, that US agents had helped him escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985.
The CIA at the time denied such claims as “completely absurd”. But now the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spy arm, has disclosed that its agents – and those of the CIA – did later use Mr. Taylor as an informant, the Globe reports.
Globe reporter Bryan Bender told the BBC’s Network Africa programme that Pentagon officials refused to give details on exactly what role Mr. Taylor played, citing national security.
But they did confirm that Mr. Taylor first started working with US intelligence in the 1980s, the period when he rose to become one of the world’s most notorious warlords, Mr. Bender says.
Mr. Taylor was later elected Liberia’s president.
He has been accused of arming and controlling the RUF rebels in neighboring Sierra Leone during a 10-year campaign of terror conducted largely against civilians.
If convicted, Mr. Taylor would serve a prison sentence in the UK. He denies charges of murder, rape and using child soldiers.”
http://world.myjoyonline.com/pages/africa/201201/80108.php
I don’t feel sorry for the Charles Ghankay Taylor’s of this world. As he gnashes his teeth in his prison cell, Charles Taylor will be wondering what hit him. With his fifty-year jail sentence, he will have ample time to reflect on his tomfoolery. He will have enough time to realize that what he mistook for friendship with the imperialist was anything but. He will have time to ponder the truism of the saying by that: “In International Relations, there are no permanent friends nor permanent enemies, but permanent interests.”
People like Charles Ghankay Taylor are just stupid imbeciles who refused to read correctly their history lessons and learn from the mistake of quisling like themselves. These moronic idiots allowed themselves to be used and abused by enemies of their people. They mistook the tolerance of their masters for acceptance. They strutted around like important potentates whilst they remain nothing but puppets on a string. They forgot that you must have a long spoon if you want to sup with the devil.
The list of these traitors that betrayed Africa is very long. In Africa, Idi Amin, Bokassa and Mobutu, all dictators of the highest brutality enjoyed the patronage of western governments until they ran afoul of their paymasters.
Their sordid deeds are well known and well documented by their controllers who thought nothing of using the information against them. They all died miserable deaths like the miserable cretins they were. Oh, sorry, we shouldn’t talk ill of the dead!
And they say we shouldn’t blame the imperialists.
PS: Those Africans that danced for joy and believed that justice was served by the jailing of Mr. Taylor, should try and read the views of the dissenting Judge (he is from Senegal) on the panel that passed the sentence of Charles Taylor. See: http://www.africalegalaid.com/news/justice-malick-sow-charles-taylor-trial-speaks
About the Author
Femi Akomolafe is a passionate Pan-Africanist. A columnist for the Accra-based Daily Dispatch newspaper and Correspondent for the New African magazine. Femi lives in both Europe and Africa and writes regularly on Africa-related issues for various newspapers and magazines.
Femi was the producer of the FOCUS ON AFRICANS TV Interview programme for the MultiTV Station.
He is also the CEO of Alaye Dot Biz Limited Dot Biz, a Kasoa-based Multimedia organisation that specialises in Audio and Video Production. He loves to shoot and edit video documentaries.
His highly-acclaimed books (“Africa: Destroyed by the gods,” “Africa: It shall be well,” “18 African Fables & Moonlight Stories” and “Ghana: Basic Facts + More”) are now available for sales at the following bookshops/offices:
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