title:  Trump’s Policy Adviser? A Former Lobbyist With Ties To An African Warlord
text: Who is Paul Manafort? Well, for starters, he s a former principal lobbyist with the firm Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (BMS & K), a firm that had close ties to the Reagan and Bush White House and works closely with Republicans on Capitol Hill.But that s not where the firm has made most of its money. Before merging with Gold & Liebengood to form BKSH & Associates in 1996,  BMS & K was renowned for representing a multitude of sketchy African dictators, warlords, guerilla warfare groups and individuals responsible for the most reprehensible human rights violations in the world.One of their most notorious  clients  was Angolan war lord Jonas Savimbi, who oversaw what The Daily Beast documents as mass-amputation of those they deemed the enemy, and state-sanctioned rape. Savimbi and his guerilla army sought to take back control of the Marxist dominated, Soviet Union backed government in Angola through UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola). A bloody civil war, over two hundred people died a day, and Manafort s lobbying firm oversaw a  negotiations for the continuation of warfare. Senator Bill Bradley, in his memoirs, noted that had it not been for Manafort s heavy lobbying, a ceasefire would have been reached sooner.As John Prendergast wrote in a 1999 essay for the United States Institute of Peace:The government s branding of Jonas Savimbi as a war criminal creates a thin but important precedent for reversing the state of total impunity that exists presently. Savimbi is indeed responsible for a litany of crimes against humanity, but of course he is not alone The Human Rights Watch documented the horrors of child soldiers at he hands of Savimbi, writing that those forced into the guerilla warfare were robbed of their childhood and forced to fight in one of the most violent civil wars in world history:Both the largest opposition group, National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), and the government used child soldiers in the war. Children s rights groups have estimated that as many as 11,000 children were involved in the last years of the fighting. Some children received weapons and arms training and fought in the conflict. Many others acted as porters, cooks, spies and laborers .UNITA soldiers regularly beat children for infractions and assigned them hazardous duties. UNITA combatants also sexually abused girls and assigned them as  wives  to soldiers.Now where did Manafort come into play? Well, Savimbi courted his lobbying firm to get United States leaders on board with the coup (after all, the United States was still heavily invested in the Cold War). And through their lobbying efforts quickly got President Reagan and Congressional Republicans to convince the CIA and other American intelligence agencies like the State Department to fund and support Savimbi.Between 1985 and 1989, Savimbi and UNITA paid Manafort and his associates over $850,000 while the United States supplied $42 million for their efforts.Even though using child soldiers was (and still is) banned by International law and Angolan law, the  freedom fighters  (as Reagan called them) were still in the business of heavy exploitation. And Manafort and his associates didn t care, so long as they got their paycheck.And now he s an advisor to Donald Trump. Any questions?Featured image via Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images