Also SEE,
Oil, African Genocide, and the USA's LRA Excuse
http://www.anngarrison.com/audio/oil-african-genocide-and-the-usas-lra-excuse
Rwanda: Colonizing Eastern Congo
http://www.anngarrison.com/audio/rwanda-colonizing-eastern-congo
Congolese abandoned by international community
http://www.anngarrison.com/audio/congolese-abandoned-by-international-community
Submitted by annie on Mon, 02/04/2013 - 09:14
In December, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair opened the Special Hearing on the Democratic Republic of the Congo by saying that the U.S. was by then standing alone, amongst its Western allies, in its ongoing support for Rwanda, despite the UN Group of Experts report documenting Rwanda's command of the M23 militia. The militia had created another million Congolese refugees inside and outside the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in fighting resumed in April 2012.
Congolese child in a refugee camp in 2012
In January, Germany unfroze $26 million in aid to Rwanda, taking the pressure off the U.S. The UN Security Council has also refused to sanction top Rwandan and Ugandan officials implicated in the report. Georges Nzongola, Professor of African Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill says this confirms what he wrote in the London Guardian in November, that "No One but the Congolese People Can Save the Democratic Republic of the Congo."
Transcript
KPFA/Anthony Fest: Yet another “peace
agreement” for the Democratic Republic of the Congo was set aside, unsigned
this week, but many Congolese and Africa activist organizations, including
Washington D.C.-based Friends of the Congo and the African Great Lakes Action
Network, say the agreement held out no hope anyway. They say that the
international community has turned its back on the Democratic Republic of the Congo. KPFA's
Ann Garrison spoke to Congolese Professor Georges Nzongola, African Studies
professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and former head of
the Africa Studies Association in the U.S.
Though the 2011 Congolese election was deemed a fraud and failure, by groups including the Carter Center and the International Crisis Group, some said that the Congolese people affirmed their national identity by fighting so hard to have a real election.
Though the 2011 Congolese election was deemed a fraud and failure, by groups including the Carter Center and the International Crisis Group, some said that the Congolese people affirmed their national identity by fighting so hard to have a real election.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: African Studies Professor Georges Nzongola said that nothing has changed the conclusions he explained in a London Guardian essay published last November.
Nzongola also accused Congo’s president, Joseph Kabila, of being a weak and corrupt collaborator in the theft of Congo’s resources, who has made no real attempt to build either civil society, or a real army, that could protect the country’s borders. The international community including the Security Council, the U.S., and UK, and other major Western powers, have nevertheless continued to arm and otherwise support Kagame, Museveni, and Kabila.
Paul Kagame, Joseph Kabila, Ban-Ki-Moon, and Yoweri Museveni at the African Union, where South Africa and Tanzania both refused to sign the peace agreement for the DRC because, for one, they thought it should have an African rather than UN command.
Today Professor Nzongola told KPFA that the Congolese people realize they’re on their own, but haven’t given up.
Georges Nzongola: Since the
Democratic attempt failed in 2011, right now the feeling among the Congolese is
to find a way to do it by other means. So the Congolese have not given up.
There are Congolese all over the world, talking to each other, trying to figure
out how we can develop a mass democratic movement.and even develop a group that
would use whatever means are necessary to take over the state.
Georges Nzongola: Exactly, some type of resistance, even including some type of military action if necessary. So that is going on, and these groups have been talking about this for the last couple of years, although it is very very difficult working in an environment where we don't have any country around the Congo that will support such a thing. We don't see support coming from Congo-Brazzaville, or from Angola, or from Tanzania, or Zambia, or South African Republic. Our hope is that we can mobilize people internally, to really paralyze the state, and create a situation where it might be possible.
KPFA: And that was Congolese Professor Georges Nzongola, Professor of African Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
For Pacifica, KPFA and AfrobeatRadio, I’m Ann Garrison
Only the Congolese people can save Democratic Republic of the Congo
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2012/nov/28/congolese-people-democratic-republic-congo
Congo DRC cannot rely on its illegitimate government or the
international community to protect its people and resources
The wily Rwandan strongman has perfected this game, first posing as Congo's liberator from the Mobutu dictatorship through the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo in 1996-97 under Laurent-Désiré Kabila, and then establishing the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie in 1998 to fight Kabila when he did not turn out to be the kind of puppet president Kagame wanted in Kinshasa.
Unlike these groups, however, which were established out of the blue by Rwanda and Uganda as rebel groups against the Congolese state, M23 emerged as a Tutsi unit within the Congolese army this year, as its predecessor, the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), did in 2006. Since the outbreak of the inter-African war for DRC resources following the invasion of the Congo by Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi, Kagame learned it would do no good for Rwanda to be so openly involved in invading, occupying and looting its giant neighbour.
M23 rebels motion to the photographer not to take pictures on the Goma to Rutshuru road. Photograph: Jerome Delay/AP
The very name M23 is a clear indication of the umbilical cord tying it to the CNDP, since the group claims its rebellion is in retaliation to the non-respect of the peace agreement between Joseph Kabila – Laurent's son and president of Congo since 2001 – and the CNDP on 23 March 2009. Despite its diplomatic language, that agreement represents the capitulation of the Kabila government to the strategic interests of Rwanda, incorporating into the Congolese army a militia group composed of Congolese Tutsi and Rwandan soldiers, and loyal to a foreign army.
While renegade general and CNDP founder Laurent Nkunda was placed under house arrest, his deputy Jean-Bosco Ntaganda was named a general in the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo, a fifth column within the Congolese army, despite an arrest warrant issued by the international criminal court (ICC). In March, President Kabila gave indications of succumbing to the pressures of his western masters who, having allowed him to remain in power despite a presidential election that he clearly lost in November 2011, insisted that he deliver "the Terminator" (Ntaganda's nickname) to the ICC. Thus began the newest "rebellion" under the CNDP's new name, the M23.
Three lessons are to be drawn from this latest episode of Rwanda's aggression against the DRC. First is that the root cause of the unending crisis in Congo is the absence of a legitimate government and a viable state. A weak and extremely unpopular leader, Kabila is a usurper who has no legitimacy and is incapable of discharging the duties of chief executive in a strategically important country such as the DRC. During nearly 12 years in power, he has squandered the country's wealth and failed to build effective state institutions, particularly the army, police and civil service. If he has any respect for himself and love for a country he considers his homeland, he ought to resign.
Second is that Kagame and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni will not stop their attempts to control and loot North and South Kivu (for Rwanda) and the Ituri district of the Eastern Province (for Uganda) as long as Kinshasa is unable to protect its borders. As strong allies of the US in the "war against terror" in the region, and particularly in Sudan (where Rwanda has an important contingent in the UN/African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur) and in Somalia (where Uganda is leading the fight against the al-Qaida-affiliated al-Shabaab), they can count on US and UK support. Witness the major powers' failure to impose sanctions on both countries in the face of numerous reports implicating them in human rights violations and the looting of DRC natural resources. Most shocking in this regard is the international community's silence on the 2010 mapping report of the UN high commissioner for human rights on crimes against humanity, war crimes, and possibly crimes of genocide committed by the current Rwanda regime within the Congolese territory between 1994 and 2003.
The third lesson is that, under the circumstances, the people of Congo would be fooling themselves to believe that they can count on the international community to deliver them from Kigali, Kampala and their external backers. If 13 years of UN peacekeeping and $1.5bn spent each year for the UN mission cannot deliver peace and stabilisation, what can other "neutral" forces from Africa or elsewhere do to change the situation? The salvation of Congo lies in the hands of her own sons and daughters.
