Genocide tied to former South African security forces who are now serving as mercenaries in Iraq

WASHINGTON, PRETORIA, AND WINDHOEK -- November 26, 2005 -- Four mass graves discovered in Namibia -- genocide tied to former South African security forces who are now serving as mercenaries in Iraq. According to Finnish parliamentary sources, four mass graves were discovered beginning early this month near Eenhana, a former South African military base, 850 kilometers north of the national capital, Windhoek and near the Namibian border with Angola. It came as no surprise to the U.S. embassy in Windhoek since the Bush I administration had worked closely with the South African military occupation and closely followed the killing of around 27,000 South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) insurgents over a 30 year period in one of Africa’s longest running guerrilla wars along the Angola-Namibia border. This included the death count among the insurgents’ Far East Detachment deployed around the South African 54 Battalion bases of Eenhana, Elundu and Nkongo.

The U.S. embassy in Windhoek and Pretoria and both Bush administrations have kept the information on the mass graves away from the public for over a decade since Namibian independence in 1990. Many of the perpetrators of the killings are now being used by U.S. companies as security consultants in Iraq and elsewhere as part of the "Global War on Terrorism." Their number is an estimated 5000 strong in Iraq and 1400 elsewhere in south and central Asia. These apartheid contractors are involved in a daily working relationship with U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida and the coalition military bases across Iraq, including intelligence sharing and source development Some contractors are involved in interrogation work and training for the US military and CIA effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan. One company the South Africans reportedly work closely with is CACI, one of the firms implicated by the Taguba Report with the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.

Indeed, the South African mercenaries' former commanding officer in the South African Defense Forces (SADF), General Roelof ‘Witkop’ Badenhorst, who officiated over much of the military occupation in Namibia, was militarily trained in the United States prior to the Carter administration’s enforced weapons boycott and a ban on apartheid military personnel receiving training in the United States.

The Eenhana gravesites are believed, according to Swedish and Finnish diplomats, to contain as many as 2500 to 4000 dead Namibians. They noted that every South African military (SADF) base in northern Namibia has similar unmarked graveyards and that a systematic investigation and proper and respectful re-interring of the human remains is a necessity. The U.S. embassy in Windhoek and Condoleezza Rice, for their part, have remained silent.

Before retiring to a chicken ranch, Badenhorst commanded an apartheid hit squad called the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) that employed retired members of Koevoet and the apartheid security police on the SADF account to kill anti-apartheid activists and academicians in South Africa. Badenhorst falls under an immunity from persecution in Namibia under a general amnesty granted by the United Nations to all perpetrators of human rights and war crimes during the occupation. Badenhorst is entitled to visit the United States and he and his colleagues are regularly feted by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and US military attaches operating out of the US embassy in the Arcadia suburb in Pretoria.