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again in the Kivu region of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
With the birth of M23, the Kigali regime re-engineered the mutation of an old proxy force, the CNDP, into a new one with the same agenda:
Weaken DRC
Loot its (DRC) natural resources
Pretend that Rwanda can now solve the problem by paying lip-service to negotiations
Deceive the world that Rwanda is after Rwandan armed groups, especially FDLR
Use this presence in DRC to manipulate the international community against looking at the problems within Rwanda itself.
In all this president Kagame’s trademarks remain deception, total disregard for human life and disrespect to the international community.
First, where is Africa in all this? It is African countries, notably through the African Union, that chose Rwanda to represent the continent at the UN Security Council.
Like Rwanda, DRC has been bleeding for several years and has lost 6 million of its citizens due to Kagame’s wars of plunder and killings.
Can’t Africa save DRC and Rwanda from the most vicious and brutal dictator since Idi Amin?
Second, the United Nations has a peacekeeping operation in DRC: over 20 000 personnel and an annual budget of close to US$1, 5 billion.
What is the United Nations doing in DRC if it cannot defend a small African city like Goma, women and children? The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has become too close to president Kagame that he has lost objectivity in dealing with the crisis in DRC.
In 2010, when the Mapping Report was published, Ban Ki-Moon hurriedly packed his bags and went to Kigali to beg Kagame not to pull out Rwandan troops from Sudan.
The Mapping Report has been shelved.
Now as the Goma drama unfolded Ban Ki-Moon called Kagame, pleading that the latter “use his influence” to stop the advance of M23 on Goma. Incredible!
It is the same United Nations that has rewarded Kagame with a seat on the Security Council and is now failing to hold him and his officers accountable for the violations of international law. What is the stand of the United States and British governments on the unfolding tragedy in Goma?
Rwanda has invaded a neighbouring country and violated DRC’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. President Kagame’s regime is brutal and dictatorial at home and belligerent in the Great Lakes region. Washington and London have been Kagame’s allies since 1994 and friendship with powerful nations has made him more intransigent and willing to undertake costly risks.
It is important for Washington and London to re-evaluate their relationship with Kagame to avoid the “French-Rwanda” disease. In the early 1990s France was able and yet unwilling to read the signals showing the last days of a regime, committed sins of omission and commission, and has regretted since.
France was capable of playing a good influence through a friendly regime of president Juvénal Habyarimana. It chose not to.
The consequences were catastrophic. Washington and London have a narrow window of opportunity to stop and reverse their unquestioning policies towards Rwanda’s Paul Kagame.
Failure to do so in the short and medium term will contribute to even worse tragedies in Rwanda and the Great lakes region. The tide of change may not seem evident to the uncaring, distracted or biased eyes.
President Kagame is now the butcher of Rwanda and DRC. He will certainly go.
The question is: will he do so peacefully or with unprecedented bloodshed in Rwanda and the region? If Washington and London cannot help Rwandans and Congolese to end this bloodshed and human suffering, at least they should not make matters worse by keeping silent or supporting Kagame as he puts the whole region on fire. It is time for Washington and London to make a choice. The Rwandan and Congolese people must, as a matter of urgency and survival, work together to save themselves and their motherlands.
Rwandans and Congolese people must seek the solidarity of Africans in the struggle against a minority clique under Kagame’s rule.
Rwandans and Congolese must seek partners in the international community who regard respect for human rights, peace, freedom and shared human progress as cornerstones of international relations. Goma is now in the hands of Rwanda’s troops masquerading as M23.
It is a teachable moment that DRC’s forces could not defend an outpost like Goma against Rwandan invaders. It is shameful, but understandable that UN peacekeepers could not defend Congolese people. There are such moments of betrayal in the UN’s history in DRC and Rwanda.
After all, Rwanda deployed its special forces and almost a division of its armed forces, its equipment and other resources to take Goma. Rwanda is now poised to take Bukavu in South Kivu and most likely will be lured into DRC’s tempting, but dangerous belly, as far as the capital, Kinshasa.
As Goma fell to Rwanda’s troops president Yoweri Museveni of Uganda and president Kagame, both condemnable co-authors of this latest outrage against the Congolese people, met president Kabila of DRC in Kampala in a sham diplomacy designed to serve him with a fait accompli and an ultimatum to accept M23 as a Congolese organisation with legitimate demands.
Even then, Kagame must know this: it will be a futile exercise since, like all his ventures in DRC, he will be forced to abandon it, leaving with bags of coltan, diamonds and gold, and behind him a trail of blood, tears and sweat of Rwandans and Congolese. DRC will, sooner than later, prove to be Paul Kagame’s Achilles heel, as wars that he has perpetuated abroad finally reverberate on the hills of Rwanda.
This worst case scenario is not inevitable, but the time to act to prevent continuing bloodshed is now.We must organise, not agonise.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s second term opens with the worst kind of display of US power — backing two clients, Rwanda and Israel, who are hell-bent on creating mayhem against their neighbours. UN will do nothing against these two.
The Israeli assault on Gaza continues. The death toll rises over 100, infrastructure is destroyed, and the UN relief agencies are at wit’s end. The UN mission in Goma, a major city in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), removed all non-essential staff from the area.
The peacekeepers, with a threadbare Congolese army force, remain to defend the city. On its outskirts sit the M23 movement rebels, backed by the Rwandan armed forces. They moved rapidly to get to this crucial city, the capital of North Kivu.
There are already 2,4 million internally displaced people in the DRC, with 4,5 million suffering from food insecurity, and a million children under five suffering from severe acute malnutrition.
The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said on November 19: “This new escalation in fighting in and around Goma and elsewhere in the Kivus, adds to what are already monumental humanitarian needs in the DRC.”
Unicef warned: “The renewed conflict is putting children and their families at risk, leaving them exposed to physical harm and mental distress.”
Rwanda should have been at the centre of a UNSC discussion on eastern Congo. But it has not.
Neither Rwanda nor Israel will ever be hauled over the UN courts. The United States will prevent any serious discussion of the military adventures of its allies: Israel and Rwanda. For the former, Israel, there is a formal doctrine (Negroponte Doctrine) that enjoins US ambassadors to the UN to block any criticism of Israel.
There is no such formal statement for Rwanda, but there might as well be.
Criticism of the M23 movement is allowed, but there will be no allowance to criticise its sponsor, the Rwandan government of Paul Kagame.
During the Clinton administration, three heads of government were chosen as the new generation of African Renaissance leaders — Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni, Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki and Rwanda’s Kagame.
All three have atrocious records in their own countries and as far as Kagame and Museveni go, in the Congo. The DRC’s Lambert Mende said that M23 is a “fictitious force,” and that the “real aggressor” is Kagame’s Rwanda.
But there is silence on this, as both Israel and Rwanda are immunised from any serious criticism by the UN, and therefore the “international community.”
Dossiers filled with appalling behaviour and genocidal language flood the UN missions.
Paul Kagame is on record as having called the Congolese, in his native Kinyarwanda, Ibicucu, “nobodies” or “good for nothings” (by Colette Braeckman in Les Nouveaux Predateurs, 2003).
He speaks cavalierly about their “removal”.
It is the same spirit that former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s son, Gilad, who is a member of the Kadima Party, wrote an op-ed in the Jerusalem Post (November 18), with genocide on his mind.
“Flatten all of Gaza,” he incited. “The Americans didn’t stop with Hiroshima — the Japanese weren’t surrendering fast enough, so they hit Nagasaki, too.” Such comments should raise the eyebrows of the UN Human Rights Council, whose silence on both Goma and Gaza is as stark as its loud noises during the lead-up to the NATO intervention in Libya.
That UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has called Kagame and DRC’s Joseph Kabila to come to some kind of accommodation, shows that there is open acknowledgment that the M23 acts with Rwandan backing.
Yet, there are no sanctions on Rwanda. — Pambazuka News.
Online Reporter