|
Who killed John Garang?
An investigation by Dr Walter Okello
1.09.2005
The veteran Sudanese rebel leader John Garang was killed in a helicopter crash as he was returning form a visit to Uganda. Most preliminary reports blamed his death on an accident due to bad weather. But by the day of his funeral on August 6, 2005, the SPLM group that he led was privately starting to regard his death as an assassination.
What really happened? Who was the mastermind behind his assassination and why?
On the evening of July 30, 2005, it is reported, the first vice president of Sudan and leader of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, Lieutenant-General John Garang De Mabior, 60, six of his aides, and seven Ugandan government officials aboard a Ugandan presidential helicopter, were killed in a crash just inside the Sudan. Garang had just returned from Uganda where he held talks with the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni at Museveni’s country home in Rwakitura in western Uganda.
It is important to note that this was Garang’s first visit outside Sudan since his swearing-in as First Vice President three weeks earlier on July 9 in the capital Khartoum. Those killed onboard the helicopter were: the Sudanese Lieutenant-General John Garang de Mabior and his aides Lieutenant-Colonel Ali Mayen Majok, Lieutenant Colonel Amat Malwal, First Lieutenant Deng Majok Kuany, First Lieutenant Mayen Deng Mabior and Oboki Obur Amaybek. The Ugandan dead were: pilots Colonel Peter Nyakairu and Captain Paul Kiyimba; Flight Engineer Major Patrick Kiggundu; a Protocol Officer at the Presidential Palace, Samuel Andrew Bakowa; the helicopter’s Jet Officer Lieutenant Johnson Bahebya Munanura; a signaller with the Presidential Escort, Corporal Hassan Kiiza; and a flight hostess on the helicopter, Lillian Kabaije.
Reports of foul play initially dismissed
It seemed incredible that just three weeks since formally becoming a part of the Sudanese government and what was the start of new hope in Africa’s largest country, John Garang should die in a helicopter crash. When news came through confirming that Garang was dead, there was a rush to blame the crash on bad weather and to rule out any act of sabotage or foul play.
Garang’s party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the Khartoum government said the crash was an accident brought about by poor weather conditions. A news report on Sudanese television on Aug. 1 said: “The SPLM affirms that the cause of the helicopter crash was bad weather, and there were no other reasons behind it, so as to avert the rumours which have been circulating since the announcement of the incident. The SPLM affirms that the crash occurred due to bad weather.”
The United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan also said that "all indications as of now seem to indicate it was an accident." The chief mediator during the Sudan peace talks in Naivasha, Kenya, retired Kenyan Gen. Lazaro Sumbeiywo, said on Aug. 1 that there was no foul play since Garang had flown over an SPLM-controlled area.
"I totally disregard that [claim of foul play] completely because the area he was flying into was an area he controlled," Sumbeiywo said. Even Garang’s widow was quick to blame his death on poor weather. The Nairobi-based Kenya Television Network station in Nairobi spoke to Rebecca Nyandeng Garang and on Aug. 2 broadcast this news report:
“Speaking on telephone interview with KTN from southern Sudan, the widow said Dr Garang and his aides however told her that the pilot had assured them that the chopper was capable of making the journey. She ruled out foul-play, saying her husband, like the biblical Moses, had fulfilled his mission and his time to move on had come.”
Suspicion, scepticism, calls for investigation begin
However, despite these reassuring statements, riots broke out in Khartoum and some major southern towns upon confirmation of Garang’s death. By Aug. 3, up to 100 deaths were being reported. Rumours had by then began spreading in the region that Garang had been assassinated and had not died in an accident. So charged was the atmosphere immediately following Garang’s death that a
senior SPLA commander Paulino Matip made an abrupt appearance on Sudan TV on Aug. 3 to refute rumours that he had been killed.
"I, Paulino Matip…I would like to tell them that Paulino Matip is alive and well, and that the rumours that were being spread by some people with a specific agenda are untrue," he said.
As the week progressed and the news sank in, opinion once again slanted toward the idea that Garang was or might have been the victim of an assassination. Given the history of Garang and his guerrilla war; the bitter ethnic and religious north-south history of Sudan in general; the geo-political importance of Sudan along the River Nile and within the Islamic-Arab world; the large oil fields just beginning to be explored in the south; the past divisions and rivalries within the southern Sudanese rebel groups; the role of such regional players as Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Chad, and Uganda, and international players as the United States, China, and South Africa in Sudanese affairs, the earlier and somewhat naïve view that Garang’s death had simply been an accident seemed too incredible to believe. The questions concerning Garang’s death soon turned into endless suspicions.
A Sudanese rebel commander, Abdel Wahed Mohammed Ahmed Nur of the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Army, told the French news agency AFP on Aug. 1 that he did not believe Garang had died in an accident.
“I believe this was the result of a big conspiracy against the Sudanese people…Personally, I don’t believe in an accident.”
The Kenya Television Network reported on Aug. 3: “In Uganda, the government is under fire for allegedly failing to follow basic aviation guidelines when it allowed the late Dr John Garang to fly out of Entebbe. The Museveni government is being accused of giving Garang's flight the green light to proceed to Sudan at night against aviation rules that bar any helicopter of the category Garang travelled in to fly beyond 5.00 p.m.”
The Iranian Arabic language newspaper Al-Vefagh in an editorial on Aug. 3 titled “Who are the beneficiaries?” commented: “The mission of President Umar al-Bashir will be sensitive. He must launch a probe into the incident so as to find out the truth and deny any opportunity to those seeking to fish in m! uddy waters."
The Le Pays newspaper of Burkina Faso in West Africa, --- where in Oct.1987 the country’s charismatic president Captain Thomas Sankara was assassinated under equally mysterious circumstances ---echoed this growing scepticism in an editorial on Aug. 2 titled: “Theunfinished struggle of Garang":
Could it be an accident or an attack? The confusing circumstances of the crash give room to all kinds of imagination. Only an independent inquiry will enable this situation to be clarified….The Sudaneseauthorities, on their part, will, undoubtedly, shed tears,pour out honours on the mortal remains of Garang, and praise his pragmatism. But will all this not smack of hypocrisy?
The Arab and Muslim leaders in Khartoum, as was observed, were forced to accept the signing of the peace accords with the Sudan Popular Liberation army. They unwillingly accepted to share power (and the resources of the country) with the most implacable of their enemies, John Garang…. Already, in Khartoum, reports have it that there have been violent riots following the announcement of the death of thevice- president. Nobody can convince these protesters that theaccident of the helicopter in which John Garang died was due to"poor visibility" as Khartoum claims….
The impact of this death on the entire region cannot be ignored either, given the very close links that Garang had with Uganda andKenya. Omar El Bechir, the Sudanese president, will have to answera lot of questions, and especially give proof that the death ofGarang is not a calculated plan.”
A scathing editorial on Aug. 4 in a newspaper, L'Avenir of the Democratic Republic of Congo --- for nine years the scene of invading armies from Rwanda and Uganda ---focused its suspicions on the leader of the latter country.
Titled “Shame for Africa”, the L'Avenir editorial comment read as follows in which it described Garang the battle-hardened guerrilla as having been too naïve in peacetime to grasp the ferocity of theforces in operation around him:
“John Garang is dead. He tasted the fruit of peace and power only for three weeks….Our question is only to know what Garang was doing in a Museveni helicopter? We are neither superstitious nor suspicious, but there are people southern leaders should have avoided.
The Ugandan leader was one of those. Thus, John Garang, sinned through unforgivable naivety. His mistake was to believe that the northern leaders had signed the peace agreement in good faith. Consequently, in the same belief, that the Sudanese government would accept, in accordance with the agreement, after six years, to organize a referendum on the autonomy of that part of the country. The result of such a consultation is clear for the Sudanese government. They are aware of the fact that the south, especiallywith John Garang, could only say yes to self-determination. Which for the north would mean giving up petrol and other wealth of that part ofthecountry which fought for more than two decades to have the right for self-determination. By giving up the wealth of the south, the Sudanese government would have proved that it had waged a useless war to keep a hold on that part of the country. That means that one would think that there was a wish to sign a peace agreement with other people than John Garang. The latter, it was feared, had a quite clear idea about the struggle he was waging and the results he hoped to achieve. With him, the logic of peace was to be pursued up to theend. This would have put the Sudanese government under pressure or even its back against the wall. However, with another person, there could be changes and pressure reduction.
It is not [improbable] that Museveni, who has just amended his country's constitution so as to participate and win the [forthcoming presidential] elections would be tempted by the opportunity brought about by the Sudanese situation. John Garang could in this case have become the exchange chip against the [Lord’s] Resistance Army combatants, through which Sudan attacks Uganda. In order to believein this, one should keep a watch on the evolution of the situation. ”
A southern Sudanese, Jacob J. Akol, commented in the Daily Nation newspaper of Kenya on Aug. 3: “Whether we liked him or not, all of us Sudanese - northerners and southerners, friend and foe alike – must still be in shock after the death.Dr John Garang put his life on the line for the last 22 years for the freedom of his people and the "New Sudan" vision he believed in, but died before achieving. It is a bitter pill to swallow for the Sudanese in general and we southerners in particular. His death would have been "expected", if not "timely", if he had been shot by an assassin when he landed in Khartoum after more than two decades away from the capital. The death could not have been so "unexpected" if he had died at the hands of his fellow southerners during power struggles in the early 1980s, early '90s and even as recently as just before the final peace accord was signed in Nairobi in January. Even those who hated him will readily admit that Garang was the man of the hour for Sudan's presidency heading the government of national unity. Already, there were talks ofPresident Umar al- Bashir pushing the issues of Darfur, eastern Sudan and the northern political parties to the first vice-president, who was more at home with the leaderships of all the groups.Even manyhours after the official SPLM/A's announcement of the death, some still hoped against hope that he was still alive. To them he was a legend, no longer an ordinary man to be pronounced "dead" by mere mortals. To echo what a friend in Nairobi has just told me that his friend in Khartoum told him today, "now they mourn, tomorrow they think".And when they begin to think, it will take a lot to convince them that the helicopter in which Garang died just crashed, as planes do, without anyone to blame.It will undoubtedly be in the interest of President Museveni, who lent his helicopter to his friend, for the government of Southern Sudan and that of national unity to immediately call in experts from the US and Europe to investigate the accident.
It would be wrong to assume that things had gone on so well for Garang and Sudan so far this year that it would be madness for anyone to think of eliminating him at this stage in the game.In Southern Sudan itself, there are armed groups and individuals who see Garang as the villain of piece among them, not the hero he is said to be.
Take the remnants of Anya-Nya II - a movement he successfully eliminated in the early 1980s to consolidate SPLA; they are still bitter. Some within the southern militia groups, who now collectively call themselves South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF, armed groups al- Bashir called "friendly forces"), would not be pleased to see Garang sit next to the president at the palace. Garang's recent pronouncements to have the militia or "other forces" disarmed if they refused to integrate with the SPLA or the government of Sudan's armed forces, or lay down their arms, could not have gone down well with them. And although al-Bashir and his close allies would be assumed to have nothing to gain in the short run from the death, it would be naive to rule out the involvement of generals in the Sudanese armed forces based in the south, who have vested interest in continuing the war. Getting rid of Garang would rock the boat he has got himself onto with al-Bashir, and they have the means to bring down a helicopter.”
The American columnist Wayne Madsen, commenting on the Garang accident wrote: “It is imperative to exercise a healthy dose of skepticism whenever there is a plane crash involving a key political figure in Africa. For example, we know from recent history that colonialist and apartheid forces were involved in the shooting down of the aircraft of UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold and Mozambican President Samora Machel. Niger's Tuareg leader Mano Dayak was killed in a suspicious plane crash in Niger a year and a half after the shooting down of the Rwanda One aircraft. As with the Rwandan and Burundian (Melchior Ndandaye was elected Hutu president but was soon after assassinated by the Tusti) leaders with their opposition, Dayak was engaged in peace negotiations with the central Niger government and was on his way to Niamey when the plane crashed. However, an autonomous Tuareg government threatened to undermine the plans of Exxon and other U.S. oil companies and mineral miners to have a free hand in exploiting oil and mineral resources around Lake Chad, along the Chadian-Nigerien border.
Equatorial Guinean officials were mum about who and how many people died in a recent plane crash near the capital Malabo. Equatorial Guinea, an oil rich but immensely poor African nation, was recently in the news as a result of the exposure of slush funds maintained by the former Riggs Bank of Washington, DC on behalf of Equatorial Guinea's dictator Teodoro Obiang. Are aerial assassinations in Africa influenced by Big Oil? Yes.
The wreckage of Rwanda One Mystere Falcon executive jet (top) carrying Presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, their staff, and a French crew; ordered shot down on April 6, 1994 by U.S. clients Yoweri Museveni and Paul Kagame. Major oil and natural gas reserves had been discovered in Rwanda, Uganda, Eastern Congo and Sudan. Soon, Museveni met with British officials of Heritage Oil and Kagame with Shell Oil officials. Kellogg, Brown & Root/Halliburton helped Angola track down and assassinate…Dr. Jonas Savimbi, Angola's UNITA rebel leader. That was a boon for U.S. oil companies and British and Israeli diamond and gold miners. And to ensure that Angola's government remained a central player in UN negotiations between Luanda and rebel UNITA forces, UN envoy and chief negotiator Alioune Blodin Beye's aircraft suspiciously crashed on its final stage of landing at Abidjan airport, in Beye's native Ivory Coast.
Now, Garang's death in one of Museveni's helicopters may presage the fracture of Sudan and that will be a boon for U.S. oil companies and British and Israeli gold and diamond miners….The trend is unmistakable.”
Another writer, Charles Onyango-Obbo, also commented in the Daily Nation on Aug. 4: “When former guerrilla leader and Sudan's Vice President John Garang died with six aides and seven crew members while on his way back from Uganda in a Ugandan presidential helicopter, not everyone was willing to rule out the work of an evil eye or hand…So what happened? Museveni's statement said that though the helicopter could, therefore, fly both at night and during the day, it is always our policy not to fly in mountain areas at night or during low visibility weather conditions. There is a hint there that apart from bad weather, someone made a bad judgment to fly thehelicopter in the dark. Remarkable, because considering the cargoit was carrying, there perhaps might have been a little more caution.
But there is a third prospect - enemy action."
A senior aide to Garang, Deng Alor, told the United Press International news agency on Aug. 1 that the SPLM could not rule out any possibility and was therefore seeking an investigation. On Aug. 2, the SPLM under intense pressure from its followers called for an international investigation into the helicopter crash.A Ugandan group that went to southern Sudan on Aug. 2 to identify and return home for burial the bodies of the Ugandans aboard the helicopter was blocked and the bodies held until a probe was held.
An SPLM spokesman, Pagan Amum, was quoted on Aug. 3 by the Sudan Vision newspaper as saying the SPLM hoped that the United Nations, Uganda, Kenya, the United States and Britain would take part in the investigations. The Sudanese government backed down and announced that an inquiry would be made into the cause of Garang’s death.
The statement by Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni
In a statement issued on August 1 upon confirmation of Garang’s death, Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni outlined the circumstances of the incident:
“The helicopter was a recently overhauled executive helicopter that has served us well for the last eight years. In fact, recently, some of the instruments were upgraded.It was very well-equipped with the ability to show the pilots the altitude using both radio altimeter that shows you how far you are from the ground as well as a Barometer altimeter that shows you how high you are from sea level; a weather radar that shows you bad clouds ahead as well as mountain ranges up to 100 kms away; Advanced Moving Map System (AMMS) that shows you
where you are at any particular time and the terrain features such as
mountains; a powerful floodlight system to avoid hitting trees and
other landing site obstacles; and audio warning in case you are approaching a mountain ahead. The helicopter was also wired against lightening strikes, according to the manufacturers. It could, therefore, fly both at night and during the day, according to the pilots although it is not our policy to fly in mountain areas at night or during low visibility weather.”
A Ugandan newspaper, the Daily Monitor, on August 3 quoted sources as saying the “foreign government” referred to by Museveni was the United States. The first conflicting news reports of Garang’s disappearance The first reports that the helicopter carrying Garang was missing were given by the Sudanese government. The Ugandan Information Minister Abdel-Basit Sabdera said on state television on Sunday July 31 that the helicopter left Uganda the previous day for southern Sudan, but that Ugandan air traffic controllers had lost contact and that the Ugandan military had began a search. Later in the day, the television broadcast a special news bulletin in which it was said that there had been a delay in Garang’s expected time of arrival from Uganda which had caused some anxiety. The broadcast that interrupted regular programming said that after losing contact with air traffic controllers at Entebbe in Uganda due to poor weather, the plane had "landed safely at a camp in southern Sudan."
The Voice of America also reported the missing helicopter in a news bulletin on Sunday. A Ugandan army officer, Captain Dennis Musitwa told the Associated Press news agency that the helicopter carrying Garang has crash-landed in southern Sudan, and Ugandan soldiers were searching for him.
"They left yesterday in a Ugandan chopper," Musitwa said. "What we know is that the aircraft got weather problems and crash-landed. We have not established where they landed. They have not reached where they are supposed to reach, and we are trying to locate them," he added. Earlier on Sunday, an SPLM spokesman in Nairobi, Yasir Arman had said that Garang was "safe and sound " in southern Sudan.
“Arman declined to give further details, and there was no immediate explanation for the apparently conflicting report on Garang,” the Associated Press reported. Then suddenly, it all began to change. Officials that had positively stated that Garang was “safe and sound” in southern Sudan or had arrived safely from Uganda now began to retract their statements and, as the Associated Press commented, there was no explanation for why these reports were conflicting inregard to a straightforward matter of letting the public know aboutGarang’s arrival. Radio Uganda, the government-owned station in Kampala, broadcast a statement from the government on Monday Aug. 1 explaining to the public the latest developments:
“The Government of Uganda would like to inform the public of our anxiety regarding the safety our brother Dr John Garang, the first vice-president of the Sudanese interim government and president of southern Sudan. His Excellency Dr John Garang paid a visit to President Yoweri Museveni's home arriving at Rwakitura, Mbarara on the 29 July 2005. He spent the whole day discussing with his host, spent the night at Rwakitura and part of the following morning, that is 30 July 2005. He also briefly met with some representatives of the European Union and the United States ambassador to Uganda. He left Rwakitura by presidential helicopter MY72 at around 1545 hours for his base at New Site in southern Sudan just north of Kidepo National Park. Due to the need for topping up fuel they stopped in Entebbe and left at five minutes before 1700 hours. By 1830 hours the plane was overflying Karenga and Kadepo areas near Kidepo. It attempted to land in southern Sudan, at a place known as New Kush, but aborted landing because of bad weather and headed southwest. It was overheard over Pier towards the Kenyan border. Since morning we have been searching the Kidepo area to locate the plane without success. The governments of Sudan and Kenya have been informed. We do share the anxiety with the public since it is now 24 hours beyond the estimated time of arrival of the plane at its destination. The search is continuing and we have asked for the cooperation of the brother Republic of Kenya, whose border is quite close. We shall keep you informed of developments.”
That same Monday morning, Sudanese Information Minister Abdel-Basit Sabdera appeared on state television to broadcast a bulletin reversing his earlier statement that Garang had "landed safely at a camp in southern Sudan."
“Up to now we do not have any concrete new information about the whereabouts of the plane," he said. What happened between Uganda and Sudan?
On Aug. 2, Garang’s widow, Rebecca Nyandeng Garang spoke to the Kenyan Television Network from southern Sudan and explained the events leading up to the crash. Apparently, Rebecca Garang had spoken to her husband and some of his aides on Saturday while they were in Entebbe during a re-fuelling stopover. She expressed her concerns about their decision to fly back home at the hour of 5:00 p.m.Ugandan time when it might be late and inconvenient. She said Garang and his aides had allayed her fears, saying that the presidential pilot, Colonel Peter Nyakairu, had assured them that the helicopter would make the journey and return safely.
“One of his aides called me at a quarter to five when they were taking off from Entebbe and I even told them, At five you will not be able to reach here on time. But they told me that the pilot said that they will make it,” she said.
Mrs. Garang headed for the airstrip at New Site in southern Sudan near the Kenya-Sudan border to wait for the helicopter, even though she was feeling some reservations about the flight. She waited until after 7:00 p.m. local time but the helicopter had not yet arrived and by which time it would have been unsafe to land. She returned home, made a call to Garang’s satellite cell phone only for him not to reply and the phone switched to the voicemail service. Concerned, she then rang up President Museveni and told him that the helicopter had not yet arrived well past the expected time of arrival.
“President Museveni responded and he continued talking to me. He told me that…he was informed that these people took off but he will continue to find out what is going on. And that night we continue communicating with President Museveni,” she told KTN.
In the meantime, SPLA soldiers went out into the night and began searching the mountain area and nearby bush for Garang and the missing crew. It is not clear if the SPLA soldiers had heard any aircraft sound in the area to prompt them to embark on a search there. The Radio Uganda statement said that the helicopter “was overheard over Pier towards the Kenyan border.”
According to the KTN TV report, the soldiers eventually came across the wreckage of the helicopter at 2:00 p.m. the next day, Sunday July 31 but decided not to tell Garang’s wife until 5:00 p.m. the next day, Aug. 1. In all, it was reported that 14 people, one of whom was Garang, had died in the crash.
An SPLA adviser who identified himself only as David told the Associated Press: "The crash was violent and the wreckage was charred but the remains are identifiable."
The weather as a factor in the crash
The first source to mention bad weather was the statement issued by President Museveni, but this was in the same statement that added that the helicopter that was equipped with “a weather radar that shows you bad clouds ahead as well as mountain ranges up to 100 kms away.”
The Associated Press also reported that “Weather reports showed rain in the area.” Even if bad weather were in the area of the Kenya-Sudan border, Colonel Nyakairu and his co-pilot Captain Paul Kiyimba would have been alerted to the inclement weather long before the helicopter reached the area and turned back. What is interesting is that Garang’s wife appeared to express more worry about the late hour of the flight than the bad weather that was later blamed for the helicopter crash. None of the earlier reports that first said Garang had arrived safely added that he arrived in spite of the bad weather or that the helicopter made it through bad weather to land safely. None of the Sudanese radio and television broadcasts or the statement of anxiety broadcast by Radio Uganda mentioned or hinted at the poor weather as being a source of concern. In her KTN TV interview where she told of being in contact by phone with President Museveni, Rebecca Garang did not mention in any way that the weather conditions in the area had come up for discussion between her and the president. The SPLA aide to Garang who talked to Mrs. Garang on phone from Entebbe as they were preparing to take off for southern Sudan reassured her that the pilot had said they would make it safely. The aide made no mention of the weather as a matter for concern but rather the late hour. The pilot would have studied the weather reports while still at Entebbe. He appeared not to have been particularly bothered by that. The conversation between Garang and his wife --- even with her recalling it with the benefit of hindsight --- did not mention her fears over the bad weather in the New Site area.
Ugandan newspaper reports later that week speculated that crosswinds in the area might have hit so hard at the aircraft and as a result affected the performance of the precision instruments in the cockpit. Even if for some reason the helicopter crew and air traffic control at Entebbe had no access to the latest weather reports from southern Sudan, this would not have stopped Mrs. Garang who was at home from expressing reservations to her husband about the wisdom of undertaking the flight. She would surely have insisted that both the late hour of the day and the dark clouds that she could see forming over the New Site area prohibited such a flight.
From the way President Museveni described the Ugandan helicopter carrying Garang on that fateful day, there was almost no possibility of an accident under nearly every circumstance. He even mentioned the fact that “it is not our policy to fly in mountain areas at night or during low visibility weather.”
If there was bad weather in the area that the helicopter was approaching, this would have been detected and reported long before the aircraft arrived in that foul weather area. How much more would the Uganda government have taken additional precaution when the guest aboard the helicopter was John Garang, a long-time friend of Uganda and now an important player in the new Sudanese interim government? Since this was a presidential helicopter that had served President Museveni well “for the last eight years”, it would have received better maintenance and careful checkups than the average Ugandan aircraft. This would have included sufficient fuel both in its tanks and in reserve. News reports confirm that the helicopter, on return from President Museveni’s private home in western Uganda, first landed at Entebbe air force base for re-fuelling, before flying on to southern Sudan. Moreover the helicopter was flown by experienced pilots each with over at least 15 years of experience. The news reports abruptly started mentioning the weather only after it was confirmed that Garang and the other thirteen people had died. Something else also reveals much about what happened: Mrs. Garang said that when she tried to call her husband on his mobile phone as her anxieties mounted, instead of him answering her, the call went to the answering voicemail machine.
Kenya’s retired General Sumbeiywo told KTN in an Aug. 1 news interview said of the denial of sabotage from Garang’s SPLM: “It was more credible from the SPLM people who were here because they had tried his satellite phones and they were not working.” If the helicopter was “charred” as the SPLA officer David told the Associated Press, then the delicate cell phones would have been among the first things onboard to be wrecked. The frantic calls would not have been going to the voicemail service at all since the phone would have been totally destroyed both by the rain encountered during the storm and the searing fire from the burning wreckage.
No photographs of the helicopter wreckage published
Nothing, however, raises more doubts in the minds of the general public more than a most striking fact. If there was any story that could pass for the African story of the year for the first half of 2005, the death of Garang would surely be it. It received intense news coverage and public interest in all the countries that border Sudan --- namely the Central African Republic, Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, and Uganda. It was the top running news headline story on the Atlanta based Cable News Network (CNN), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) both for radio and television, Radio France Internationale, the Voice of America, the South African Broadcasting Corporation, and allthe major wire news services: the Associated Press and United Press International of the United States, Agence France Presse of France, Reuters of Britain, and Xinhua of China. And yet, none of these major world news agencies and companies reported on, published, or provided an artist’s impression sketch of any kind of the helicopter in its wrecked state during the one week since the crash.
Riots broke out in Sudan upon news of Garang’s death.
Mindful that conspiracy theories were spreading through the population and recalling what the downing of an aircraft over Rwanda in April 1994 had done in triggering off a genocide and how easily in a bitterly divided Arab-Black African, Christian-Muslim Sudan could a repeat of genocide be especially right at the end of a 21-year civil war, the most important antidote to public unrest would have been for the authorities to publish a photograph of the helicopter as a way of demonstrating that, indeed, Garang had been killed in an accident.
Nothing of the sort happened.
Neither the Ugandan government who owned the doomed helicopter nor the Sudanese government and the SPLM made a call for the publication of the photographs to allay their people’s anxieties and suspicions.
Was Garang assassinated?
Writing on Aug. 7 in the Daily Monitor, a Ugandan newspaper, a Kampala journalist and amateur aviation enthusiast Michael Walabi remarked: “It is also significant that at no stage during their communication with [Air] Traffic Control [at Entebbe] do the crew declare an emergency other than reporting that they had run into bad weather. A specific distress call would have been sent out had there been equipment failure of any kind. This suggests that all the aircraft’s parameters were performing normally until impact.”
All this would lead to one possibility: that the helicopter was either brought down by ammunition fire or was blown up while on the ground and the crew assassinated then. Museveni’s statement makes it appear that the only factors that would have brought down that particular helicopter would have been unexpected mechanical failure, a sudden running out of fuel, or a weapons hit. However, the Kampala journalist Wakabi also pointed out that “hostile fire is very improbable given the aircraft’s capabilities and the fact that it was raining hard around the crash scene. The kind of sabotage that would have brought down such a machine at that stage of its flight is also unlikely, as it would…have had to relate to altitude and position indicators.”
On Aug. 5, Museveni shocked mourners in Yei, southern Sudan, when he became the first head of any government to publicly suggest that the helicopter could also have been brought down by foul play.
"Some people say accident, it may be an accident, it may be something else," he said.
"The [helicopter] was very well equipped, this was my [helicopter] the one I am flying all the time, I am not ruling anything out," he added.
"Either the pilot panicked... either there was some side wind or the instruments failed or there was an external factor."
“His comments were met with stony silence from the crowd, which had earlier greeted the arrival of Garang's coffin with wailing, ululation and prayer,” the French news agency AFP reported.
The Sudanese news agency Suna reported on Aug. 5 that the Sudanese government was “very disturbed” by statements that Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni had made in Yei on the circumstances of the crash.
“Speaking to Suna, the minister of information and telecommunication, who is also the official government spokesman, Abd-al-Basit Sabdarat, said that the cause of the disturbance was that President Museveni was the one who informed the government that the plane was missing after more than 12 hours from its take off from Kampala and he also knew that the plane was Ugandan and the plane crew was also Ugandan, and it also departed from his country,” Suna reported.
Sabdarat added: “We are making efforts to investigate the saddening incident and we have already started our investigations by setting up a technical committee and we hope that all parties, especially Uganda, would stop issuing statements which are not based on facts.”
When Sabdarat stressed “especially Uganda”, he was doing more than issue a firm appeal; there was implied in the tone of his voice an accusation directed at President Museveni. Why did Museveni come out and speak this way, knowing how sensitive the matter was to his audience? Teams of aviation experts from Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda dispatched to the crash site recovered the helicopter’s flight datarecorder, the “Black Box” on Aug. 4. Did President Museveni now realise that the black box would fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle and thus was trying to pre-empt any accusations against him by preparing the public for the worst? Since the Sudanese public had been soothed with the explanation that this was an accident due to bad weather and Museveni was in Yei in a highly emotional atmosphere, for his own security reasons, he would not have wished to provoke further anger in Sudan. There had to be good reasons for his apparently careless slip of tongue.
Museveni’s notorious reputation in the Great Lakes region
First, about the assassination of Fred RwigyemaIn October 1990, a Rwandan refugee in Uganda and deputy defence minister, Major-General Fred Rwigyema, led an invasion of Tutsi refugees into Rwanda where they sought to force the government of President Juvenal Habyarimana to negotiate and permit them to return home. Rwigyema was a long-time aide of President Museveni. The Tutsi had been living in Uganda since a Hutu-led coup in Rwanda in 1959.According to South African and French intelligence sources, Rwigyema launched the rebellion against the wishes of Museveni who had proposed that this invasion be put off until 1995.When Rwigyema went against Museveni’s wishes, the president who was then in New York attending a summit ordered the assassination of Rwigyema on Oct. 3 by top Rwigyema aides in the invading force --- Major Peter Baingaina, the director of the Ugandan army medical services, Major Chris Bunyenyezi the commanding officer of the Ugandan army’s 306 Brigade, and Major Sam Kaka, the commanding officer of the Ugandan military police. Museveni then dispatched his half-brother, Major-General Caleb Akandwanaho alias Salim Saleh to shoot Baingana, Bunyenyezi, and Kaka dead on a farm inside Uganda a few days after Rwigyema’s murder. This was apparently in a move to silence them from revealing Museveni’s handin the assassination of Rwigyema.Rwigyema’s body was brought to Uganda and Museveni went to the government hospital of Mulago to view it. He sat alone for hours in a private room looking at Rwigyema’s body.Museveni then influenced the appointment of Major Paul Kagame who was in the United States undergoing a training programme to succeed Rwigyema at the head of the Rwandan Patriotic Army.
Second, about the assassination of Presidents Habyarimana of Rwanda, Ntaryamira of Burundi In 1993, President Museveni hatched a plot to assassinate the President of Rwanda, Juvenal Habyarimana. The Rwandese president had become intransigent in his position of permitting the Rwandan rebels into a power-sharing role in his government.Museveni ordered the purchase of missiles that would be used to shoot down Habyarimana’s plane. A team of assassins was sent for training on how to fire the missiles on the shores of Lake Victoria at a place called Nabugabo near Masaka town in Uganda. When the time for the plot to unfold came, the missiles were driven in a pickup truck into Rwanda by an RPA rebel commander called James Kabareebe. The assassins waited outside the Kanombe airport fence on the morning of April 6, 1994 and watched Habyarimana take off in his Falcon-50 presidential jet for a regional summit in Tanzania. They estimated that their missiles would be able to bring down the plane comfortably. In Tanzania that day, President Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi decided to fly to Rwanda with his Rwandan counterpart Habyarimana on the Rwandan plane. Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni desperately tried to dissuade Ntaryamira from flying with Habyarimana, urging him to stay back and hold bi-lateral talks with the Ugandan delegation. When Ntaryamira insisted on going, Museveni reluctantly let him go. That evening as the Rwandan presidential jet carrying Habyarimana, Ntaryamira, Rwandan officals and the French crew were returning from Tanzania just over the international airport in Kigali, a Ugandan intelligence agent, Humphrey Babukika, fired the second of the two missiles that would bring down the plane and trigger off the 1994 Rwandan genocide. A secret United Nations memo issued in March 1997 put the blame for the shooting down of the plane on Uganda’s President Museveni and the then Rwandan rebel leader Major-General Paul Kagame. According to the UN memo, Museveni provided the Russian-made Igla series surface-to-air missiles (SAM 16s) which were used to shoot down the plane.
Third, about the assassination of Congolese President Laurent Kabila On January 16, 2001. The President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Laurent-Désiré Kabila, was shot by a soldier at the presidential palace in the capital Kinshasa. For several hours there was confusion regarding what had happened. The Kinshasa government claimed that although Kabila had been shot, he was still alive. Press reports coming out of Kinshasa said at the time that Kabila was shot by one of his bodyguards in front of Congolese army generals following a quarrel. On January 18, 2001, the World Socialist Web Site in a report on Kabila’s assassination wrote: “Ugandan involvement in the assassination may be indicated by the fact that only Ugandan reports were positive that Kabila was dead. A senior intelligence source in Kampala telephoned Reuters saying ‘I am 101 percent sure he is dead.’”
Further light was thrown on Uganda’s hand in Kabila’s murder during a programme on a Ugandan radio station, KFM, on Aug. 1, 2005. The show host, Andrew Mwenda (now under arrest), while speaking to a Ugandan major general Kahinda Otafiire (a former advisor to President Museveni based in Congo), mentioned the fact that the man who shot Kabila dead, Rachidi Kasekera, was once a bodyguard of Otafiire in Congo. Otafiire did not deny Mwenda’s claim because the order to assassinate Kabila came from Museveni.
Why Museveni masterminded Garang’s assassination
Given Museveni’s track record in using assassination to effect changes in Uganda and the region, the widespread rumours that Museveni was the hand behind Garang’s death bear some plausibility. In late 2002 or early 2003, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army headed by Garang received a large consignment of arms. They included rifles and such medium sized weapons as surface-to-air missiles. The arms were ferried through Uganda which over the years had served as a conduit for SPLA arms from abroad and into SPLA-controlled camps. President Museveni secretly seized the arms and their whereabouts have never been known. The SPLA accused Museveni of stealing their arms. The SPLA leadership also accused Garang of having caused this theft of their arms by trusting and dealing with Museveni theindividual rather than handling the arms shipment between the SPLAhigh command and the Ugandan Ministry of Defence. The two years of peace talks in Kenya consumed the SPLA commanders’ time but as soon as the peace agreement and swearing-in were achieved, the SPLA told Garang to fly to Uganda and order Museveni to return their arms. Garang was usually carefree, jovial, and open with Ugandan journalists. He always spoke his mind with them and all interviews were usually informal affairs. But on the day he landed at Entebbe International Airport en route to western Uganda to meet Museveni, July 29, he was not his usual relaxed self. Having just recently witnessed the signing of the Sudan peace accord and been sworn-in as First Vice President, Garang was as effusive and humorous as always when he was met by the Ugandan vice president, Dr. Gilbert Bukenya at the airport.
Yet when a journalist at the airport from the government newspaper, the New Vision, asked him what he was going to discuss with Museveni, Garang was guarded: “I am going to talk with Museveni not you,” was his reply, uncharacteristically brief and cool for a man who always joked with Ugandan reporters. The usually easygoing Garang could have brushed off the reporter’s question with a general statement about having come to Uganda to hold bilateral talks with Museveni. On this occasion Garang could not even bring himself to speak lightly about his trip to Uganda. Reports from sources inside Uganda revealed to this investigation that Garang and Museveni were, in fact, no longer on such warm terms as they had been since their student days at Dar es Salaam University in Tanzania in the late 1960s. Undoubtedly, tensions between them had arisen over the missing SPLA arms that Museveni could not account for.
Once at Museveni’s country ranch, Garang got straight to the point and confronted Museveni with demands by the SPLA to explain what had become of the arms. A senior SPLA official whom Garang spoke to on phone during the night he spent at Museveni’s home said Garang had noted that during their talks, Museveni was uncomfortable and could not look Garang in the eye. That night, Museveni decided that the only way out of his embarrassing situation over the SPLA arms was to eliminate Garang. It appears that the SPLA leadership knew of or suspected Museveni’s hand in the assassination of Garang, which is why they were eager to blame their leader’s death on bad weather even before preliminary investigations in order to first prevent the kinds of mass killings that followed the 1994 assassination of Rwandese President Habyarimana.
As soon as news of Garang’s death was confirmed, Museveni suffered a mental breakdown. (He usually breaks down when he has successfully gotten rid of a major political opponent, sources inside Uganda toldthis investigation.)
The Ugandan media explained away Museveni’s absence from public view for two days after Garang’s death as him “mourning” and later a government spokesman said Museveni had ben “devastated” by the news of Garang’s death.
The Sudanese newspaper Alwan reported on Aug. 16, that the commander of the Southern Sudan Defence Forces (SSDF), Major-General Paulino Matip, had accused the Ugandan government of having a hand in the murder of Garang.
“He further said that he would be in the forefront of those who would revenge for the late Garang's killing in the event that the helicopter was indeed blown off. However, he denied existence of any sort of differences between him and the late Garang,” the newspaper reported.
In late August, an American insurance firm which had insured Garang’s life sent representatives to Uganda to conduct the company’s own thorough investigations into the circumstances of Garang’s death before they could pay compensation to the Garang family. The Uganda government, for unexplained reasons, blocked the company from undertaking investigations.
Back to top |
