escalator over the hill

Kofi Annan: Peace Maker or War Monger

Kofi Annan seems a nice enough chap with a great  track record at the UN At the time of his tenure as Secretary General of the UN he became increasingly criticised that he aspired to bring the UN into line with U.S. international interests. Originally he called into question the ideological foundations of the UN and undermined its ability to prevent conflicts.

It is this man who is today in charge of resolving the Syrian crisis. Is he qualified as a Peace maker or War Monger?

So before posting my next post which is to be on  Syria I though it pertinent to put the current peace negotiation situation into some context. A context I hope will prove that not only is Annan capable of concluding a peaceful solution but it is not his intention either.

The Syrian Crisis

Former UN Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize, Kofi Annan, was designated by Ban Ki-moon and Nabil El Arabi as joint special envoy to negotiate a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis. With Annan’s extraordinary experience and shiny brand image, his appointment was welcomed by many. What is this man,s resume and  what does this top international official really represent? Who propelled him to the highest-ranking positions? What were his political choices, and what are his current commitments?

These questions are not broadcast and it is accepted that  his previous functions were in themselves no guarantee of neutrality in this crisis.

Handpicked and trained by the Ford Foundation and the CIA

His former colleagues praise him for his thoughtfulness, his intelligence and subtlety. A very charismatic personality, Kofi Annan left a strong imprint behind him because he did not behave simply as the “secretary” of the UN, but more like its “general,” by taking initiatives that revivified an organisation that was mired in bureaucracy inaction to criticise the US over its foreign policy.

All that is known are his so-called exceptional professional qualities earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

So Who is Kofi Annan

Kofi Annan was born in 1938, into an aristocratic family of the British colony of the Gold Coast. His father was the tribal chief of the Fante people and the elected governor of Asante province. Although he opposed British rule, he was a faithful servant of the Crown. Though, he took part in the first decolonisation movement against the British in Ghana, he opposed the revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah with suspicion for his socialist leanings

In any event, Nkrumah’s efforts led to the independence of the country in 1957. Kofi was then 19 years old.

Though not involved directly in the revolution, he became vice-president of the new National Student Association. It was then that he was spotted by the Ford Foundation who incorporated him into a program for “young leaders.” To attend the neo liberal school in the US.

After the Second World War, the Ford Foundation, created by famous industrialist Henry Ford, became an unofficial instrument of U.S. foreign policy, providing a respectable facade for the activities of the CIA

He was invited to follow a summer course at Harvard University. Having noticed his enthusiasm for the United States, the Ford Foundation offered to sponsor his complete studies, first in economics at Macalester College in Minnesota, followed by international relations at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva.

Kofi Annan’s overseas study period (1959-1961) coincided with the most difficult years of the African-American civil rights movement and the start of Martin Luther King’s Birmingham campaign.

He saw it as an extension of the decolonisation he had witnessed in Ghana, but he did not get involved.

Impressed with Annan’s academic achievements and political neutrality, his U.S. mentors opened the doors of the World Health Organization, where he landed his first job.

After three years at WHO headquarters in Geneva, he was appointed to the Economic Commission for Africa based in Addis Ababa. However, not sufficiently qualified to pursue a career at the UN, he returned to the United States to take up management studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (1971-1972).

He then attempted a comeback in his home country as Minister of Tourism with the military government of General Acheampong who had  led a coup d’état to overthrow the democratically elected government of the Progress Party and its then leader Dr. Kofi Busia on 13 January 1972 He failed in this role so the democrat Annan gave up and returned to the United Nations in 1976.

A successful career despite tragic failures

There, he held various positions, initially within UNEF II (the peacekeeping emergency force established to supervise the cease fire between Egypt and Israel at the end of the October 1973 war), then as Director of personnel at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

It was at this time that he met and married Nane Lagergren Master, his second wife a Swedish lawyer and  the niece of Raoul Wallenberg, Sweden’s special envoy in Budapest during World War II.

Wallenberg is famous for having saved hundreds of persecuted Jews by issuing them protective passports. He also worked for the OSS (forerunner of today’s CIA) as a liaison with the Hungarian resistance. He disappeared at the end of the war, when the Soviets discovering his US espionage links captured him to stem US influence in the country.

Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar

Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar chose Kofi Annan as Assistant Secretary-General in charge of human resources management and staff safety and security (1987-90). With the annexation of Kuwait by Iraq, 900 UN employees remained stranded in that country.

Kofi Annan was able to negotiate their release with Saddam Hussein, which boosted his prestige within the Organsation. He was then put in charge of the budget  1990 and in 1993 peacekeeping operations under New Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1993-96) with a brief interlude as a special envoy for Yugoslavia.

Rwanda

According to Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, commander of the UN peacekeeping force in Rwanda, Kofi Annan failed to respond to his many appeals and carries the primary responsibility for UN inaction during the genocide (800,000 dead, mainly Tutsis, but also Hutu opponents

Annan Bin Laden and Bloodied Hands in Bosnia

A similar scenario was repeated in Bosnia, where 400 peacekeepers were taken hostage by Bosnian Serb forces. Kofi Annan remained deaf to the calls of General Bernard Janvier of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR), was the first United Nations peacekeeping force in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the Yugoslav wars. and allowed the perpetration of predictable massacres.

One UN soldiers later says to the British newspaper the Observer11/5/1995 , “Why don’t you write about Visoko airport? Planes land there all the time and we think they’re American.” The airport reprted by NSA officer John Shcindler WAS run by Halid Cengic. father of Hasan Cengic, who is one of the key figures smuggling huge amounts of weapons into Bosnia through the “Third World Relief Agency”, a charity tied to non-other than Osama bin Laden

By March 1995, General Bernard Janvier, commander of UN forces in Bosnia, reported  to Kofi Annan that the Visoko airport is illegal and supply flights are landing there. The Canadian peacekeepers report  that unmarked flights coming into Visoko are American. This  UN report is not made public. [Schindler, 2007, pp. 184-185]

According to the Observer in November 1995, some Bosnian politicians say that the US is the “number one donor of all weapons into Bosnia” and British sources say the Visoko airport was built with US help

In late 1996, the United States vetoed the reappointment of the Egyptian Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General. They succeeded in imposing their candidate: a senior official from within the international organization itself, Kofi Annan.

Far from playing against him, his failures in Rwanda and Bosnia blossomed into successes He was elected on this basis and took office on 1 January 1997.

Pocantino Conference Center

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan immediately set up an annual two-day seminar behind closed doors for fifteen UN ambassadors. This “retreat” (sic) was generously hosted by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund at the Pocantico Conference Center (upstate New York).

 Outside of the United Nations

There, outside the official framework of the United Nations, the Secretary General discussed the reform of the Organization with the representatives of the United States and others whose support he knew he could count on.

In this context, he reallocated the expenditures of the UN in line with political priorities and significantly reduced the budget of the General Secretariat. He reorganized the administrative functioning around the following objectives (peace and security, development, economic social affairs, humanitarian affairs). He created a new post of deputy secretary-general to stand in for him and endowed himself with a real cabinet capable of acting promptly on the decisions of the Security Council and General Assembly.

Kofi Annan’s landmark initiative was the ”Global Compact” the mobilization of civil society for a better world. On the basis of a voluntary dialogue, businesses, unions and NGOs were brought together to discuss and commit to respect human rights, labour standards and the environment.

In practice, the “Global Compact” has not yielded the desired effect on the ground.It has deeply distorted the nature of the UN by playing down the power of nation-states and emphasizing that of transnational corporations and of associations which are “non-governmental” only in name and which are covertly funded by the great powers. By promoting lobbies as partners of the United Nations, Kofi Annan buried the spirit of the San Francisco Charter. For the UN It is no longer a question of saving mankind from the scourge of war by recogniSing the legal equality and sovereignty of nations large and small, but of “improving” human rights by supporting the convergence between private interests against thodse of the sovereign power e.g Libya, Syria, and Cot D’Vioire.

The Global Compact is a deviation from the nearly universally accepted logic that international law serves the common good, to a truth of the  the Anglo-Americans for whom the “common good”  is a wicked illusion sold through the false reporting of Main Stream Media.

Ultimately, the Global Compact has had the same effect as the charity galas in the U.S; that is give oneself a good conscience by launching high-profile initiatives e.g. Make Kony Famous, The Peace Corps, International Refugee Organisation, Amnesty international, and Human Rights Watch etc while condoning externally imposed structural injustices like The Congo in the 60s Libya and Cote D’ivoire .

The reality of Kofi Annan (1997-2006) is of a world subjected to the globalization of U.S. interests at the expense of sovereign nation-states. Never mind free trade or indebtedness of the US If you are powerful enough just help yourself with your new Admiral at the helm

This strategy is in line with the device set up by Washington in the 1980’s involving the National Endowment for Democracy, an agency that, contrary to its title, aims to carry forward the subversive action of the CIA by manipulating the democratic process.

The NED subsidises employers’ organisations, labour unions and associations of all kinds. In return, the beneficiaries participate in the Global Compact, thereby bending the positions of the Nation-States which lack the means to fund their own lobbies.

Peace has stopped being a main concern for the UN since the world now has its own policeman and his deputies. The US can concentrate instead on neutralising all forms of protest to better corroborate global disorder and justify the progressive global expansion of U.S. Peace Keeping “Democratic” Imperialism. The soothing rhetoric of Kofi Annan was in full voice at the Millennium Summit Sept 2000 in New York. 147 heads of state and government pledged to eradicate poverty and solve major health problems worldwide, including AIDS, in fifteen years (2015). The summit was to be followed up every 5 years There has been no meeting since 2005

Injustice is nowhere near to being eradicated and the UN and NATO continues to nurture war Chaos and misery; Iraq, Libya and Syria being fine examples

Sounds Like Syria today?

In September 1999 Kofi Annan’s speech to the General Assembly outlined what has been termed the “Annan doctrine.” Using his own impotence in Rwanda and Bosnia as an excuse, he argued that in both cases the States had failed in their duty to protect their own people.

He therefore concluded that the sovereignty of States, guiding principle of the UN Charter, constitutes an obstacle to human rights protection. The African Union adopted this view under the name of “Responsibility to Protect;” the UN followed suit in 2005 during the World Summit responsible for the follow-up of the Millennium Summit.

You can begin to see how the conspiracy against Libya in 2011 was then about to unfold.

The Annan doctrine is nothing more than the reincarnation of the right to intervene invoked by the British to wage war against the Ottoman Empire and this “new” concept was used explicitly for the first time in 2011 to legalize the colonial operation against Libya.

In addition, Kofi Annan’s term as UN Secretary-General was marked by the “Oil-for-Food” programme which was devised by the Security Council in 1991, but operational only from 1996 to 2003.

It was originally intended to ensure that Iraq’s oil revenues would be used exclusively to meet the needs of the Iraqi people and not to finance new military adventures. However, in the context of the international embargo and under the personal supervision of Kofi Annan, this program became an instrument in the hands of the U.S. and the UK to bleed Iraq while they conducted the “no-fly zone” until the outbreak of the Iraq invasion and destruction of its secularity, education advanced healthcare and infrastructure.

Throughout those years, the Iraqis were undernourished and deprived of medicines.

This is being repeated today against Syria

500,000 Children Killed

Several UN officials who were in charge of the program of sanctions described it as a “war crime” including the UN Assistant Secretary-General Hans von Sponeck and UN Humanitarian Coordinator Denis Halliday. Both believed this program brought about the death of 1, 5 million Iraqis, including at least 500,000 children

It was not until the invasion and destruction of Iraq that Kofi Annan finally rebelled described the attack on Iraq as illegal and denounced those who had paid for his education, propelled his rise to Secretary-General of the UN, and awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize.Washington responded brutally with a spying operation against Kofi Annan, his cabinet, his family and even against his friends. The Secretary-General’s son, Kojo Annan, was accused of embezzling with Annan’s seniors blessing “oil for food” funds The US failed to convince the UN member states who on the contrary, re-affirmed the authority of the Secretary-General. However, during the last two years of his term Kofi Annan was controlled and forced to toe the US line.

Back to square one

After 10 years as Secretary-General, Kofi Annan continued his career in several more or less private foundations.

In December 2007, elections in Kenya degenerated into conflict. President Mwai Kibaki appeared to have defeated the candidate backed by Washington, Raila Odinga, a cousin of Senator Barack Obama.

U.S. Senator John McCain typically challenged the election results and called for counter revolution as waves of anonymous SMS text promoted inter-ethnic differences.

Within days, riots left more than 1,000 dead

Is this something like Syria today?

Madeleine Albright proposed the mediation of the Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights. The institute sent two mediators: former Norwegian Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik and former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. As a result of that “mediation,” President Kibaki was forced to bow to U.S. wishes. He was able to stay in office, but first had to accept a constitutional reform that stripped him of his powers in favour of the Prime Minister and to agree to the choice of Odinga as Prime Minister.

Or Cote D’Vioire

In his role as a roving peace envoy  Kofi Annan helped to give a veneer of legitimacy to “regime change” required by Washington

Annan stated “I urge Mr. Ouattara and Mr. Gbagbo to exercise restraint and avoid any acts that will lead to further confrontation. I call on the military and police forces of Cote d’Ivoire to protect the civilian population, avoid excessive use of force and refrain from any activities that put more lives at risk. I also call on them to cease any action aimed at hindering the peaceful and essential work of the United Nations. Soldiers and police must remember their sacred duty to serve and protect the people of Cote d’Ivoire and turn away from those who illegitimately cling to power at the cost of peace and progress”.

At the worst pro Quattara estimates and the French Military interventionism President Gbagbo enjoyed 49% of the popular vote though it must be said that though it still remains  unverified the IMF said lost the election by 8% points ie 46% v 54% . But the West still intervened militarily.

Strange times are being lived by the Ivorians these days. Since the International coup d’état that has put Alassane Ouattara in power, Cote d’Ivoire has become an anarchistic zone where Ouattara’s ragtag army and death squad roam insolently free, kidnapping and killing innocent civilians with impunity……yes like Libya

 

Kofi Annan Today

He holds 2 main responsibilities. First, he chairs the Africa Progress Panel, an organization created by Tony Blair after the G8 summit for the purpose of ensuring media coverage of the actions of the British Ministry of Cooperation (DFID). Like the Millennium Summit, the G8 promises remain empty rhetoric un fulfilled

He also serves as chair of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), which aims to solve the food problems of the black continent through biotechnology.

AGRA is a lobby funded by the Bill Gates and Rockefeller Foundations to promote the dissemination of GMO’s produced by Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemicals and others. All independent environment and economic experts concur that, beyond the issue of their environmental impact, the use of non-reproducible GMO crops keeps farmers under the thumb of their suppliers and introduces a new form of imperial human exploitation.

Kofi Annan and Syria

Note at the start of this Video the #FSA with sniper scopes attached to their weapons

So what has this former high-ranking international official going to achieve in Syria? In the first place, his appointment suggests that the current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, whose image has been tarnished by a history of Tom foolery, shooting from the hip and  kneeling to the United States not forgetting a string of corruption scandals was not up to the task. So it was back to Kofi Annan, despite his failed past; he still enjoys a week gentle spoken, no harm done image.

A mediator can only succeed to the extent that he has been selected by the sides in the conflict. 9 I know this from my family Law mediation; obviously if only one side has the choice of mediator the chance of success is very unlikely)

Kofi Annan not only represents the Secretary-General of the UN NATO and his Arab League cohorts none of whom have been democratically elected.

If the appointment of Mr Annan was approved de facto by the members of the Security Council and those of the Arab League, it is because it satisfies conflicting expectations.

Not Intended to Broker for Peace

For some, the joint special envoy is not intended to really broker peace. Others expect him to repeat the Kenyan script and bring about regime change without too much further violence and without NATO intervention albeit via Turkey who have recently gained cold feet recognising that Syria is no Libya and that with over 20% of its population consisting of Kurds it might just ignite a fire at home it can well do without.

The action of Kofi Annan has been to present as his own an amended version of the original one proposed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lvov. In doing so, he has rendered the plan palatable for Washington and its allies. In addition, Mr. Annan has intentionally introduced an element of confusion by suggesting that he had convinced President al-Assad to appoint one of his vice presidents, Farouk al-Shara, to negotiate with the Syrian opposition.

This is portrayed as a concession made by Syria to the Gulf Cooperation Council (the same organisation that funded the overthrow of Gaddafi) to negotiate some form of Government of reconciliation ( regime change) plus all the concessions made to hold a supervised multiparty election with the Baathist no longer holding a exclusive position of Leadership.

Vice President al-Shara has been in charge of these negotiations for fully 14 months previously. The demand made by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Friday by Hillary Clinton is totally different:

That is President al-Assad “has to go” and should step down because he is an Alawite and that power be transferred to the Vice President for being a Sunni.

So now it seems the West led by Clinton is now engineering a way out from those negotiations so   those states that have attacked Syria and invented the fable of a democratic revolution crushed in blood can continue tp provide  financial land  military support to the Islamist Fundamentalists.

It’s About Regime Change not Humanitarian Aid

The Lessons of Iraq Afghanistan and what is clearly emerging in today in Libya have clearly not been learned YET