From The Independent (UK), 7 May

Trade minister walks out on 'divisive' Mugabe

Harare - One of President Robert Mugabe's most competent ministers, who has rejected the recent invasions of companies by self-styled "war veterans", resigned from Zimbabwe's cabinet at the weekend. Nkosana Moyo, a physicist-turned-banker, was one of three talented technocrats brought into government after elections last June, which Mr Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF narrowly won in the face of stiff opposition from the MDC. But they have found, as the local saying goes, that there is only one bull in the kraal (cattle-pen) of the Zimbabwean government, and that sensible economic decisions fall prey to political choices aimed primarily at keeping Zanu-PF and Mr Mugabe in power.

As the Minister of Industry and International Trade, Mr Moyo was put in charge of attracting investment and helping to reverse the economic decline. At the Zimbabwe International Trade Fair in Bulawayo, he hit out at company invasions by war veterans who support Zanu-PF. The invasions have destabilised businesses already battling to survive. A former senior state official said there was speculation that the Finance Minister, Simba Makoni, another technocrat, might quit.

Zimbabwe is in economic implosion, with joblessness at 60 per cent, interest rates at 70 per cent, and a GDP that is shrinking by 10 per cent a year. Some 400 companies that closed before Christmas have not reopened. The veterans have warned that embassies and non-governmental organisations also face invasion. Mr Moyo sent his family to South Africa, reportedly en route to Britain, before making the shock announcement. His departure strips Mr Mugabe, 77, of a confident minister who may have been able to help turn around the economy had he been given a chance and weakens further any credibility the government has left.

There has been speculation that another reason for Mr Moyo's resignation was that he had failed to persuade Zanu-PF to consider forming a government of national unity with the MDC. The former state official said. "He was keen for the parties to work together in the interests of all Zimbabwe, given the current crisis." Mr Moyo told a local newspaper yesterday: "My aim is to unite people. Zimbabwe needs unification and not division." But he refused to explain the reasons for his resignation.

Any chance of the parties uniting will be further eroded today when the MDC's president, Morgan Tsvangirai, appears in court in Harare charged with treason for warning last year that Mr Mugabe - who has been in power for 21 years -would be overthrown if he did not step down. If found guilty and jailed, the hot-blooded former trade union leader will be precluded from standing against Mr Mugabe in presidential elections that have to be held within the next 18 months. It would be disastrous for the MDC, which has been building a national profile for Mr Tsvangirai and has nobody ready to take his place.

Mr Tsvangirai told The Independent that his worries about the judiciary's independence had evaporated after recent MDC court victories. The party is challenging the results of the election in dozens of constituencies on the basis of fraud and intimidation. Last week, courts set aside results in two areas, including the Zanu-PF victory in Mr Tsvangirai's constituency. Mr Tsvangirai said: "[The judiciary] is not as compliant as government would wish it to be, although individuals on the bench might still succumb to political pressure." The case is being widely interpreted as a government bid to intimidate the MDC, erode its funds, and stop Mr Tsvangirai challenging Mr Mugabe. The opposition leader believes the action is unconstitutional. "My remark may have been undiplomatic but it is not illegal or criminal," he said.

From The American Prospect, 9 April

Herman Cohen's future prospects are rosy. After all, murder and mayhem are good for business. So, too, is a lack of conscience.

Somewhere in Africa, a dictator sits in his presidential palace, alone and forlorn. Just recently, he deployed troops to quell an opposition rally and a few unarmed civilians were killed. Nothing out of the ordinary, really; but this time the international press have descended on his capital. Foreign governments are calling for democratic reforms. And embarrassed international financial institutions, which have long subsidized the corrupt regime, are openly discussing a loan cutoff. As he ponders the gross unfairness of his current predicament, the dictator is momentarily despondent. Abruptly, though, a smile comes to his face. There is still plenty of money in his personal checking account - the state treasury - so all is not lost. Far from it. The dictator flips through his Rolodex and reaches for the telephone. Who's he gonna call?

In all likelihood, lobbyist Herman Cohen in Arlington, Virginia. In recent years, Cohen has emerged as the influence peddler of choice for African despots in need of a public relations buff-up. His access and client list are both sure to grow even more now that George W. Bush - under whose father Cohen served as assistant secretary of state for Africa - occupies the White House.

Lobbying for foreign governments almost always poses ethical dilemmas. Adwoa Dunn-Mouton, a former staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Africa, worked as a lobbyist for several African governments after leaving Capitol Hill. She says that she tried to prod clients to take concrete steps toward democracy that would change international perceptions about their governments. "They didn't want to hear it," recalls Dunn-Mouton, who resigned after a brief career at the Washington Strategic Group, a Beltway lobbying firm. "The whole point of hiring a lobbyist was to have someone spin the situation so they wouldn't have to make real changes."

"Putting a happy face on murder and mayhem" is how Charles Lewis, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, describes the role of lobbyists like Cohen who represent foreign dictators. "Most of the countries who hire them have virtually no money, but they need professional schmoozers to promote their regimes," he says. "They're paying for respectability and stature in Washington and, they hope, foreign aid and access to American markets."

Though a relative newcomer to the profession, Cohen has quickly become one of Washington's best-known lobbyists for foreign nations. A key to his success is the contacts he formed, at home and abroad, during a 38-year career in the State Department (where he served as ambassador to Senegal, then to Gambia, before he became assistant secretary of state for Africa). Cohen cultivated close relations with Mobutu Sese Seko of the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo). In 1992 Mobutu's power was eroding and there was a strong internal push for a transition to civilian rule. Pro-democracy forces hoped Cohen, who went to Zaire, would press the tyrant to step down. Instead, he appeared on government-run television and announced that the aging kleptocrat was "enthusiastic for democracy." In South Africa, Cohen and George H.W. Bush's administration lifted all sanctions on the apartheid regime in July 1991 - a step opposed by Nelson Mandela, who didn't become president of the country until three years later.

After checking out of government service, Cohen became head of the Global Coalition for Africa, a World Bank-affiliated organization that preaches orthodox pro-business recipes for the continent. In 1994 he and James Woods, deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs under Ronald Reagan and George Bush the elder, formed the lobby shop of Cohen and Woods International (CWI). Cohen boasted to Legal Times about the wide range of contacts - from heads of state to Central Bank governors - that he and his partner enjoyed in Africa. "You can count on one hand the number of [top leaders] we don't know," he said. Randall Robinson, president of the TransAfrica Forum, asserts in Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America that Cohen failed to promote democracy while in office - something he could have done "with any competence and half a heart" - and that he seeks to collect "representation fees from the very African countries whose interests he formerly held in callous disregard."

In addition to offering clients strategic advice and chasing up foreign investment and aid, CWI staffers write speeches, arrange official visits to the United States, prepare briefing papers, testify before Congress, and spin the media. Disclosure reports reveal regular contact between firm employees and a host of Washington power centers - including the White House, the Pentagon, international lending agencies, and think tanks. CWI folks also serve as bigwig escorts: They may accompany, say, Mozambique's commercial attaché to a meeting with Edwin Barber of the Treasury Department's Office of African Nations; or they may introduce a top economic adviser of the Ivory Coast's president to Michael Newell, the country manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (to discuss "grant criteria").

Cohen has an especially easy time getting doors to open in the capital. During a four-month stretch in 1999, he attended a breakfast fundraiser for Representative Edward Royce, a California Republican who chairs the House International Relations Subcommittee on Africa; he lunched with Gayle Smith of the National Security Council; and he had dinner at his home with William Swing, U.S. ambassador to Congo. He's a regular on the Hill, where he meets with members of Congress and key aides. "His name carries a lot of weight, with Democrats and Republicans," says Charisse Glassman, a staffer for Democratic Representative Donald Payne of New Jersey, who also sits on the Africa subcommittee.

One of CWI's first big lobbying contracts came in 1995, when the firm agreed, in exchange for $300,000, to coordinate media relations for Omar Bongo, president of Gabon. The firm's stated mission was to present Gabon as a "politically stable and economically successful country" and to "generate awareness of President Bongo and his national and international accomplishments." Among those accomplishments was establishing the "very concrete process of democratization and democratic reforms." As the ink dried on the contract, the State Department released its annual report on human rights around the globe. This report found that Bongo's security forces were responsible for "many confirmed extra-judicial killings" and that government-sanctioned torture in Gabon was routine. ("Eyewitnesses reported seeing prisoners tied to chairs, doused with ice water, or made to crawl on their stomachs over gravel or sun-baked asphalt.")

As to "the very concrete process of democratization" that had supposedly taken place under Cohen's client - who has been in power since 1967 - the State Department said that the previous election in which Bongo allegedly won 51 percent of the vote was "marred by serious irregularities, including a secret vote count that excluded all but government observers. In Bongo's home region of Haut Ogoue, the number of votes cast for Bongo was greater than the population reported in the 1993 census." Bongo is not only a thug but a crook as well. It's impossible to know exactly how much money he has stolen from the national treasury, but a 1999 Senate report on money laundering indicates that he deposited $130 million with Citibank's private banking department. The report includes a memo that Citibank's Alain Ober, a private banking officer who handled the account, sent to several colleagues, which reads: "[I] never asked our client where his money came from. My guess ... is that in view of the importance of our client's country as a provider of cheap oil to France, it was (and still is) important that our client stayed in power and thus the French government/French oil companies (Elf) made 'donations' to him (very much like we give to PACs in the U.S.!)."

CWI's contract with Gabon lasted only a year, but there's been no shortage of business since. The firm's clients have included Tunisia, the Ivory Coast, Mozambique, and even Angola - despite the Bush administration's strong support for Jonas Savimbi, the guerrilla leader who has waged war on the country. Angola is stronger than Savimbi. Perhaps the most notorious CWI client was Charles Taylor of Liberia. He took power following a seven-year civil war that Kenneth Cain describes in a Human Rights Quarterly article as "a relentless campaign of sadistic, wanton violence unimaginable to those unfamiliar with the details of man's capacity to visit the abyss." According to Cain, Taylor "inaugurated the use of grade school-age children as scouts, spies, and cannon fodder [and] explicitly employed terror tactics, ethnic cleansing, and political assassinations."

Taylor brought this charming style of rule to the presidency, which he assumed in July of 1997. Four months later, security forces kidnapped prominent oppositionist Samuel Dokie, his wife, a niece, and a cousin as the family was travelling to a wedding. A week later, the four were found dead. All of them had been tortured; Dokie's eyes had been gouged out before he'd been burned and beheaded. In foreign policy, Taylor is chiefly known for his support of the Revolutionary United Front, a rebel group in neighboring Sierra Leone that routinely amputates the hands, legs, ears, and lips of anyone who opposes it. A contract signed in 1999 by the two parties provided that CWI would be paid $300,000 to assist Taylor in "overcoming obstacles to a constructive relationship" between Liberia and the U.S. government and otherwise help to ease the country's international isolation.

Targets of CWI's lobbying included government officials plus "the business community, the press, non-governmental organizations, and the academic world." A Capitol Hill staffer who asked not to be identified said that CWI adapted - understandably, under the circumstances - low-key approach on behalf of Liberia. "They never tried to say that Taylor was a good guy - they knew they couldn't get away with that," he says. "They'd talk about how cutting off Liberia would be counterproductive and would result in a lessening of U.S. influence." Despite its best efforts, CWI had only mixed results for Taylor. Bill Clinton's administration never imposed the broad sanctions sought by human rights groups, but it did shun the regime and bar all Liberian officials from entering the United States.

Among CWI's most recent clients - until he was murdered in January - was the president of Congo, Laurent-Desire Kabila, who drove Mobutu from power. He was paying the lobby shop $250,000 to build "a more constructive relationship" between Congo and the United States. Cohen was working on the project with Edward van Kloberg, who stands out, even within the amoral world of Washington lobbying, for handling accounts that few will touch. His clients have included Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Nicolae Ceausescu of Romania, and Samuel Doe of Liberia. (Van Kloberg's exertions on behalf of the last two came to a sudden halt when they were murdered in office following years of brutal rule.)

One of Cohen's specific tasks for Congo - and for another client, Burkina Faso -is to water down legislation that would bar U.S. imports of "blood diamonds," whose sale allows African governments and rebel groups to finance their wars. Industry officials say that blood diamonds account for about 4 percent of the world's $6-billion-a-year trade, while human rights groups argue that 15 percent is a more accurate estimate. Last year Democratic Representative Tony Hall of Ohio introduced legislation that would require that diamonds sold in the United States - where two-thirds of all diamond sales take place - be accompanied by a certificate of origin, to ensure that no blood diamonds would be allowed in the country. Deborah DeYoung, a Hall staffer, recalls that Cohen came by the office to voice his opposition to the bill. "He said that our proposal wasn't workable and that we should look at other types of control measures, like monitoring ports," she says. "He was advocating an approach that wouldn't shut down an industry that's important to his clients." In addition to African nations involved in the trade, the diamond industry fiercely lobbied against the legislation. So Hall and other supporters have altered the bill in hopes of getting it through Congress.

CWI's most recent contract - a five-year deal at $600,000 per annum - was signed last September with the government of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. At the time, Mugabe was in desperate need of a PR face-lift. His nation's economy was in shambles; and 32 people, mostly opposition supporters, had been killed during parliamentary elections held three months earlier. Meanwhile, Mugabe's land reform plan - which would seize 3,000 properties without compensation and give them to landless blacks - was generating criticism, partly at home but mostly abroad. The contract calls for CWI to take the "necessary steps to overcome recent negative publicity, and to restore enduring trust, confidence and mutual respect between Zimbabwe and the international community." Firm lobbyists are specifically asked to smooth relations between Zimbabwe and the International Monetary Fund, and to "counter anti-Zimbabwe content in the international media." As part of the latter effort, CWI is to establish a Web site that will provide news from Zimbabwe as well as information about business and tourism opportunities there.

CWI has been working especially hard to head off congressional passage of the Zimbabwe Democracy Act, which sailed through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last June but stalled on the House side. The bill would cut off American aid to Zimbabwe and require the U.S. government to oppose any loans to Mugabe's government by international lenders. Last September, to oppose the bill, Cohen personally met with Republican Representative Amo Houghton of New York. According to disclosure forms, Cohen "expressed the view that, while the objectives of promoting democracy and respect for the rule of law were certainly laudable, Zimbabwe should be given a few months to resolve its political crisis rather than rushing to impose external sanctions." Houghton's office refused to comment on the meeting with Cohen.

In an interview with TAP, Cohen defended the role of the lobbyist in general and his firm's work in particular: "We advise clients on their situation in the U.S. and tell them that if they really want to improve relations, here are some things you have to do. We aren't able to get them any privileges that they don't deserve." He said that CWI has turned down clients - for example, the former dictatorship of General Sani Abacha in Nigeria, which he called "beyond the pale" - and that the firm resigned from the Liberia account after three months. "We saw there was nothing to be done, that the government just wanted us to wave a magic wand [to make its problems go away]." At the same time, Cohen said he'd be happy to renew his firm's contract with Congo if the new government there so desired, and he acknowledged that CWI hasn't been able to convince the government of Zimbabwe to improve its record on civil and human rights. "That's beyond our influence," he said.