The short and swift way to stop the ongoing holocaust in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) goes through Rwanda: the Anglophone Tutsi minority that has ruled Kigali since the 1994 genocide must be brought to reconcile with the Hutu majority, and accept its full participation in open democratic elections.

All other measures, from so-called "peace processes" to emergency aid and human rights campaigns, albeit necessary and praiseworthy, will be just more band-aid remedies applied to the symptoms of the crisis. The root cause of the "looters’ war" is in Rwanda: it is the continuation, on Congolese soil, of Rwanda’s unfinished civil war of 1990-94.

The latest band-aid measure is the 3,100 reinforcements added to the 21,000 MONUC (UN Mission in the Congo) this week by the Security Council after the Congolese stoned UN offices and vehicles, disgusted with the MONUC’s nine-year failure, or unwillingness, to crush pro-Rwandan Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda’s "rebellion" force of 10,000.

General Paul Kagamé, the Rwandan dictator and darling of the West (especially of the Anglo-Saxon axis), who still pumps the 1994 genocide for every ounce of legitimacy, is totally self-serving when he says that the crisis in North and South Kivu "is an internal Congolese matter, not a problem between the Congo and Rwanda."


The Rwanda War spills over

For having aided and abetted the invasion of Rwanda in October 1990 by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), based in Uganda and led by U.S.-trained Paul Kagamé, and for having then forced the Hutu dictator Juvenal Habyarimana to share power with the RPF, the West must now, two decades later, work to stabilize Rwanda by restoring its ethnic balance (80 per cent Hutu, 15 per cent Tutsi, 5 per cent Twa) within a fully democratic framework.

As the genocide triggered by the downing of Habyarimana’s plane in April 1994 raged in Rwanda (Burundi’s Hutu president was also killed in that act of war), and as the RPF moved on Kigali, millions of Hutus fled into the Eastern Congo under French military protection, with the RPF in hot pursuit, and with the UN looking the other way.

Tens of thousands of Hutu refugees were massacred, their bodies burned, their ashes thrown in the forests of Eastern Congo. This forgotten genocide went on until 1996, when the RPF, with Ugandan and Burundian soldiers, marched on behind Congolese warlord Laurent-Désiré Kabila to Kinshasa where they toppled Mobutu Sese Seko. For three decades, this infamous "kleptocratic" dictator had kept the Congo and its rich resources (diamond, gold, copper, forests) safe for the West after the Cold War overthrow and assassination of elected Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba in 1961.


Nkunda, the RPF and Kabila Sr.

Laurent Nkunda was born in 1967 in the Masisi area of Northern Kivu. Like many young Tutsis of the Great Lakes region, including those who had fled into exile after Rwanda’s independence in 1962 under the Hutu majority which abolished the Tutsi monarchy, he joined the RPF which was training in Uganda to invade Rwanda.

The invasion got under way in October 1990. Instead of condemning it, the West forced Habyarimana, an ally of France, into a power-sharing agreement with the RPF in Arusha. Habyarimana’s death in the 1994 plane crash triggered the genocide and opened the way for the Tutsi re-conquest of Rwanda and for undivided RPF rule in Kigali.

In 1996, Nkunda, an officer in the RPF, went into Kinshasa with Kabila. In 1998, Kabila turned against his Rwandan, Ugandan and Burundian patrons and war broke out. Nkunda set himself up with a rebel group in Northern Kivu. Angola, Zimbabwe and Namibia sent soldiers to support Kabila and prevent the dismemberment of the Congo.

Kabila was assassinated in 2001. He was succeeded by his son, Joseph. The war ended in 2002. Rebels groups were integrated into the Congolese army. Nkunda was even made a general, but he refused. In 2006, accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, he set up the "National Congress for the defense of the people" (CNDP). He recruited boys into his "Rebels for Christ" Pentecostal sect, based himself along the Rwandan border, and professed to protect the Congolese Tutsis.


The UN’s largest peacekeeping mission

The MONUC, the UN’s largest peacekeeping mission with an annual budget of more than $1-billion, was deployed in 1999. In 2000, the UN Security Council set up a Panel of experts to examine the "systemic and systematic" looting of the resources of the Congo.

The panel submitted five reports between 2001 and 2003, showing how the "looters war" had grafted itself upon the so-called "rebellions" in the Eastern Congo – which the UN calls "the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe," with "the equivalent of two tsunamis" – 500,000 deaths – hitting the civilian population every year.

Rwanda and Uganda suddenly became major exporters of diamond and gold. By far the most attractive mineral is coltan, a natural combination of two high-conductivity and heat-resistant minerals much in demand in the electronics industry – cell phones and video games. It is just shoveled off the ground and trucked across the border.

By all accounts, life is hell for the 30 million inhabitants of Eastern Congo (about half the population of the country, in an area as large as the whole of Western Europe). Rape on a massive scale used as a weapon of war, slave labour in the mines, forced recruitment of child soldiers, illegal taxes of all kinds, sheer pillage and robbery. Many army soldiers and UN peacekeepers are also involved in the looting and in sexual crimes.


Belated but soft pressures on Kagame

Yet, Rwanda is spared by the "international community" and Laurent Nkunda is treated with kid-gloves. Citing "kidnappings, sexual violence and forced displacements," Bush’s Executive Order 13413 of 2006 froze Nkunda’s assets in the U.S., but Bush has not placed his CNDP on his list of terrorist organizations.

Nkunda was a major player at peace talks in early 2008 in Goma, capital of North Kivu, and in the ensuing Amani "peace process." But he wants direct talks with the Kabila, who he is now threatening to overthrow. As Kinshasa revises "unequal" mining treaties signed with Western (including Canadian) companies in the chaos of the 1990s, he is demanding that Kabila also renegotiate agreements he has recently signed with China.

Like his father in 1998, Kabila is now seeking military aid from Angola and Zimbabwe. Jumping on the worldwide decline of U.S. influence, Europe is now pressing Kagame.

Acting on an international mandate issued by a French judge in 2006, Germany arrested his Cabinet chief, Rose Kabuye, a colonel in the RPF, charged with involvement in the 1994 downing of Habyarimana’s plane – in which the French crew also died.

Ms. Kabuye has been extradited to France, where she awaits trial. This year, Spain’s High Court issued warrants against 40 top military officers of the RPF for genocide. In Britain, the All Party Parliamentary Group on the African Great Lakes (APPG) has condemned Nkunda’s war, calling its impact on civilians "worse than Darfur or Afghanistan."


African-American advice to Obama

Last week, British Secretary for Africa Mark Malloch-Brown, arrived in Kigali saying he would ask Kagame to "use his influence" on Nkunda to end the fighting in the Congo.

These belated "pressures" are absurdly weak in light of the "silent holocaust" sweeping Eastern Congo, 100 years after the genocide described by Adam Hochschild in his book King Leopold’s Ghost: up to 10 million innocent deaths over the last 14 years.

Real peace in the Congo, and in the African Great Lakes region, will depend on Barack Obama’s vision for the continent after he is sworn in as U.S. President in January 2009.

The Daily Voice, an African-American webzine, has some advice for Obama, calling on him to "right past wrongs in U.S. policy" in the region. In an article posted last week, Kambale Musavuli, coordinator for the Friends of the Congo, suggests that he put an end to the "carte blanche" given to Rwanda to interfere in the Congo, and that he launch "a political process to democratize Rwanda."

War in the Congo comes from Rwanda; peace will also come from there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jooneed Khan

Jooneed Khan

Jooneed is a native of Mauritius, who came to Windsor, Ontario on a Commonwealth scholarship in 1964. He is an Arts graduate of the Université de Montréal, and was a co-founder of the Mauritian Militant...