Hey Thomas, don't let yourself entangled in the Judeofascists' ad-hominem-smear-tactics!! They just can't argue decently with us so they pathetically resort to "below-the-belt" tricks...
Anyway, here's excellent news to usher in the new year:
COLIN POWELL, YOU ARE A GENIUS!!
I've been longing for this development all along: the US State Dept. must now capitalize on the anti-Al-Qaeda momentum and leverage its African policy with its anti-terrorist agenda. (*) The time is ripe for the US to take the wheel of Central Africa!
(*) Message 16813811
Tracing Terrorist Money to Source
Douglas Farah Washington Post Service Monday, December 31, 2001
Radical Groups Profit From Congo Diamonds to Finance Activities
KINSHASA, The Democratic Republic of the Congo For much of the past decade, radical Islamic organizations have increasingly turned to a shadowy, lucrative means of survival: diamonds from this vast, war-torn Central African country.
Interviews with diamond dealers, intelligence sources, diplomats and investigators in Belgium, the United States and Western and Central Africa open a window on how such groups have exploited the corruption and chaos endemic to Congo to tap into the diamond trade and funnel millions of dollars to their organizations back home. The most prominent of these groups, the sources said, is the radical Lebanon-based movement Hezbollah.
In some cases, the militant groups have worked in Congo with Lebanese diamond dealers who also conducted business in Sierra Leone with men identified by the United States as key operatives for Osama bin Laden's Qaida network, international investigators and regional diamond dealers said.
European and U.S. investigators have been working to untangle the finances of Mr. bin Laden's network, and the complex diamond trail may shed light on the flow of money and treasure that are outside the conventional banking and financial systems, the officials said.
"While we have seen little overlap between the operations or finances of Hezbollah and Al Qaida, we see some overlap among the dealers we believe worked with both groups," said a European investigator. "We are only now beginning to see the interconnectedness of criminal organizations across the region that are willing to deal with anyone if the price is right and ask no questions. Those are the people different terrorist organizations sought out."
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, President George W. Bush has repeatedly said that choking off financing of terrorist organizations was one of his priorities in the global war against terrorism. Now U.S. and European officials say that tracing and disrupting profitable terrorist enterprises in African countries that have virtually no functioning governments will be an important component of the next phase in that fight.
U.S. officials said they had vastly underestimated the amount of money Qaida and other terrorist organizations controlled, and that they were investigating terrorist links not only to Congo's diamond trade, but also to its gold and uranium trade, as well as the trade in diamonds and the semiprecious stone tanzanite in neighboring Tanzania.
"We are beginning to understand how easy it is to move money through commodities like diamonds, which can't be traced and can be easily stored," a U.S. official said.
Johan Peleman, who monitors the illegal weapons and diamond trades in West Africa for the United Nations, said "failed or collapsed states" such as Congo, Liberia and Sierra Leone "become free-trade zones for the underworld," where the actors are "international players in the field of chaos, violence and intimidation: organized crime networks and terror groups."
"The black market in arms and in diamonds, but also trafficking in human beings, passports, gold and narcotics, is what connects the local players to the global underworld economy," he said.
Diamond dealers and intelligence sources said Hezbollah and other groups bought diamonds in Congo - sometimes through middlemen, sometimes directly from miners, but always at a small fraction of their market value. They are then smuggled out of the country. The best-quality stones are sold in Antwerp, Belgium's diamond-marketing hub, while the bulk of the stones go to such emerging diamond centers as Dubai in the United Arab Emirates and Bombay.
The diamonds are sold for sizable profits, allowing the groups to finance their operations. Over the past two decades, Hezbollah's Iranian-backed military wing has been infamous for its attacks on U.S. targets, including the 1983 bombings of the Marine barracks and embassy in Beirut.
"It is in the past three years or so, as the Congo really became the Wild West, that we see the influx of hard-core Islamist extremists here," an intelligence source said. "We know Hezbollah is here, we know other groups are here, but they can probably operate a long time before we know enough to stop them."
Congo, a country about the size of Western Europe with a population of 46 million, has been riven by insurrections, war and corruption since its independence from Belgium in 1960. Ruled from 1965 to 1997 by Mobutu Sese Seko, then effectively partitioned by a pair of rebellions, Congo has few roads, hospitals or schools.
But Congo also has immense natural wealth: diamond fields, abundant timber and rich deposits of gold, uranium, tantalite and copper. Rather than enrich the country, Congo's resources have put money in the pockets of a relative few. First, Marshal Mobutu and his cronies split the treasure; now the armies of various neighboring countries have carved out portions of rich Congolese territory. They did so after the 1998 rebellion aimed at toppling Marshal Mobutu's successor, Laurent Kabila.
Though Mr. Kabila was assassinated a year ago, his allies - principally Angola and Zimbabwe - were rewarded with mineral concessions. Rwanda and Uganda, backers of the rebellion, also claim portions of Congo's riches.
A report to the UN Security Council by a panel of experts found that "exploitation of the natural resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo by foreign armies has become systemic and systematic. Plundering, looting and racketeering and the constitution of criminal cartels are becoming commonplace. These criminal cartels have ramifications and connections worldwide, and they represent the next serious security problem in the region."
The authorities in Antwerp - where more than 90 percent of the world's diamonds are bought, sold, polished or cut - estimate that about $600 million in diamonds are exported annually from Congo, but that only about $180 million worth of the stones are exported legally.
"How much of those smuggled diamonds go to these terrorist organizations is impossible to say," said a European investigator in Kinshasa.
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