Fellow African Scumbags of the Year 2009
DRC's Joseph Kabila (left) and Rwanda's Paul Kagame (right)
I was among those fools who, in January 2009, hailed the Rwandese-Congolese joint military operations in eastern Congo as the ushering of a new era of blissful peace in the Great Lakes region.
I was however shortly afterwards taken aback by the strong objections over these operations by Vital Kamerhe, then speaker of Congolese Parliament and a native of South Kivu—a rare person of integrity in the midst of the corrupt class of Congolese politicians.
Reacting to the joint operations decided in total opacity by President Kabila and without prior approval by both houses of the Congolese Parliament, Vital Kamerhe angrily voiced his disagreement to a reporter of Radio Okapi in a live interview
:“All I know is that the National Assembly adopted an exit-from-crisis plan in October 2008, submitted to the government as a recommendation. That plan had mapped out the framework of the normalization of our relations with Rwanda. That plan had also a political component. Which was therefore being done in Nairobi. But we also included in this plan that we must absolutely arrive one way or the other at eradicating the ex-FAR [pre-genocide army of Rwanda] and Interahamwe [genocidal militia].The same news report of Radio Okapi noted that the “communities of northern Kivu province reacted with indignation [at the news of] this return of Rwandan soldiers in the Congo.”
[…]
Now you tell me that Rwandese troops have just entered the Congo, I wish to believe that it isn’t true, for if it’s true, it’s simply serious, for this would raise a number of questions. We ask ourselves the question, in what state of mind are our populations that have just come out of Rwandese aggression?”
But the stupefaction of Vital Kamerhe would prove costly to his political career. Within hours of his radio outburst, President Kabila’s party stalwarts were calling for Kamerhe’s resignation—with President Kabila claiming that Kamerhe was in fact calling for a popular uprising in eastern Congo.
Kamerhe didn’t go down easily, however, clinging to his speakership till April 2009 when he was finally demoted to a simple rank-and-file parlementarian. A downfall that makes a mockery of the qualifier “democratic” in the official name of the country as the “Democratic Republic of Congo.”
But just what happened that made the joint Rwandese- Congolese military operations possible?
In January 2009, General Nkunda, the renegade general who was wreaking havoc in the North Kivu province, was suddenly arrested in Rwanda and his troops all too unexpectedly decided to be integrated into the Congolese army. BTW, when Nkunda was arrested, the Congolese government made a tepid demand of extradition that was quickly brushed off by Rwandan authorities. And to this day, Nkunda is under house arrest in Rwanda and still remains a possible spoiler of “peace” in eastern Congo.
Jason Stearns, who is on the ground in eastern Congo and who maintains a terrific informative blog called “Congo Siasa,”
explains that this dramatic turnabout happened because Rwanda wanted it to happen:“When Laurent Nkunda was arrested in January 2009, he was replaced by Bosco Ntaganda as the military leader of the CNDP. According to several CNDP officers, General James Kabarebe, the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan army, invited their officer corps across the border to Gisenyi to give them a choice: follow Bosco Ntaganda and integrate into the Congolese army or we will consider you as our enemies.”A quick reminder is in order here:
1) In one of those surreal developments that could only happen in the African Great Lakes region of this world, Rwandan General James Kabarebe was also Congo’s army Chief of staff under President Laurent Kabila, the assassinated father of Joseph Kabila, “the deus ex machina imposed by Museveni upon Kagame” to lead what the Rwandan and Ugandan dictators thought would become a “Tutsi-led protectorate” of the Congo (René Lemarchand, The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa, p. 33 and p. 17 for the quotes between quotation marks);
2) General Bosco Ntaganda, a wanted war criminal by the International Criminal Court (ICC), is still protected by the Congolese government under, as Jason Stearns’ report indicates, the dictates of the Rwandan government.
3) As noted above, the arrest of Nkunda by Rwanda translated on Congolese soil by the overnight “integration” of his troops, now under the command of General Bosco Ntaganda, into the Congolese army. This nominal integration means that these troops keep their chain of command and the territory under their control prior to their integration. This also means that virtually all of North Kivu is under the control of the ethnic Tutsi militia of CNDP.
So what happened after the joint Rwandese-Congolese joint military operations?
The answer to this question is contained in the 183-page Human Rights Watch report entitled “‘You will be punished’: Attacks on Civilians in Eastern Congo”
released on December 13, 2009 that documents the harrowing massacres carried out by genocidal maniacs of the FDLR, armed bands, the Rwandan army and the “FARDC and coalition forces,” that is, the CNDP of Bosco Ntaganda.I only lift a few excerpts from the Human Rights Watch report that show the long-term implications of what is transpiring on the ground in the Kivu:
1) “The attacks were perpetrated by Rwandan and Congolese coalition forces, although witnesses found it difficult to distinguish between Rwandan army soldiers and former CNDP combatants newly integrated into the Congolese army, who wore similar uniforms and spoke the same language [Kinyarwanda]” (p. 13);The HRW report clearly shows these disturbing developments:
2) “Former CNDP commanders newly integrated into the Congolese army appear to be using the operations as cover to gain control over mineral-rich areas and to clear the land for the return of Congolese Tutsi refugees and for cattle being brought in from Rwanda. The perceived dominance and preferential treatment given to former CNDP commanders has already led a number of local militia groups, often called Mai Mai, to abandon army integration. Some have joined forces with the FDLR” (p.22).
3) Rwandan civilian Hutu refugees “have been isolated and preyed upon for years by all sides” (p. 22).
1) Rwanda, a “Tutsi dictatorship” (René Lemarchand), has established a de facto ethnic buffer zone inside the Congo, an Anschluss of sorts that is managed by the ethnic militia called CNDP which now has the label “FARDC” stamped on its outfit.
This worrisome development was duly noted in the UN Security Council Resolution 1906/2009
of 23 December 2009 that “Reiterates the primary responsibility of the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo regarding the reform of its security sector, and encourages the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, working in cooperation with MONUC and other international partners, to build a core, well-vetted, multi-ethnic force, whose size, composition and structure should be developed by the Government, with the support of MONUC, with a view to strengthening the capacity, discipline and professionalism of the FARDC.”2) The sudden influx from Rwanda of so-called refugees that has “sparked” “accusations” of a systematic ethnic “demographic engineering of North Kivu” and “Tutsi expansionism” (Jason Stearns
). According to Jason Stearns, these refugees “are either Congolese Tutsi who were living amidst the civilian population, of whom there are quite a few, or Rwandan citizens. Congolese officials who have tried to interview returnees have been rebuffed by ex-CNDP units.”As already noted, the CNDP runs a parallel administration on the territory under its control and has even expanded it on the territory previously under the control of the Kinshasa government. In those territories, the CNDP treats local government officials with the same contempt shown by Rwandese occupying forces during Africa’s World War.
This is for instance what happened on Christmas Eve 2009 in the city Butembo, according to the website Beni-Lubero Online, in a post entitled “Butembo: A CNDP officer frees by force from prison 5 Tutsi criminals”
:“The city of Butembo didn’t spend a peaceful Christmas [Eve]. This comes as no surprise as ever since the month of March 2009, date of the peace accords between Kinshasa and the CNDP, peace at high level is struggling to extend to civilian populations at the grassroots who live amidst wails and the gnashing of teeth. For the civilian population, the agreement of Ihussi (in Goma) resembles a pure and simple handover of North Kivu to CNDP. In fact, all the military officers that command the army in North Kivu are Rwandophones [Kinyarwanda-speakers] issuing from the ranks of CNDP with at the helm Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the ICP [International Criminal Court]. Political and administrative authorities who spoke on the condition of not being quoted by name claim to be powerless in the face of this CNDP military architecture[…]This is the anecdotal lowdown in North Kivu: authorities bullied and manhandled, and civilians massacred in their own country by a predatory ethnic militia under the command of a foreign country. As one editorialist of Kinshasa predicts
[…]
The December 24 raid at the Central Prison of Kakwangura in Butembo shows indeed that CNDP officers are above the laws of the Republic and the institutions of the Province. The units issued from the CNDP are not only better equipped but better paid as well. This difference in treatment also explains the military superiority of former soldiers of CNDP over Congolese soldiers […] Thus a CNDP officer can disarm guards at the Central Prison of Butembo, detain the prison director, separate Tutsi criminals from other prisoners, and walk out with them—without the Territory Administrator, the Mayor of the city, the Province Governor, or the highest political and military hierarchy in Kinshasa uttering a word. It’s already the same thing in the case of the massacres of civilian populations in North Kivu and South Kivu, the political and administrative authorities keeping mum [over these incidents] while only talking about the ‘cinq chantiers’ [Kabila’s 5 development projects], peace restored in the east of the country, and so forth.
[...]
Here are the facts about the spectacular raid of Thursday December 24, 2009. At around 16:00, Butembo time, a Rwandese-speaking military officer coming from Kanyabayonga and who is claimed to be in charge of military operations in the area stretching from Kanyabayonga to Iringeti (according to some) or of the area called ‘North Sector’ (according to others), arrives at the Prison of Kakwangura in a jeep packed with soldiers armed to the teeth with assault rifles, RPGs, etc. Without delay, his soldiers encircle the building of the Prison of Kakwangura. This encirclement is followed by the disarming of policemen of the guard. The female director of the prison and other managerial agents of this penitentiary center are then remanded in temporary custody with interdiction to communicate with the outside. All these precautionary measures of the hold-up having been set in place, the military officer commanding the operation sets out to separate the 5 Tutsi prisoners [from other prisoners], all arrested in the south of Lubero for various crimes. According to our sources that have requested anonymity, among the 5 freed Tutsi prisoners were Captain Karajika Innocent, who is facing murder charges; Adjutant Bushiri and Lieutenant Bagabi arrested for violating direct orders; and a private called Eric Mwana Djuma, who was facing rape charges.”
, President Joseph Kabila will bloviate in his New Year address to the Congolese people about peace restored in eastern Congo whereas on the ground it’s anything but peace. Shame on him!René Lemarchand analytical concept of violence in eastern Congo and in the Great Lakes region is EXCLUSION. According to Lemarchand, there are three types of exclusion: 1) political exclusion, 2) economic exclusion, and 3) social exclusion—all three conditions have now coalesced in North Kivu, turning the place into a powder keg that will soon blow up. Again!
The eastern Congo is now under the occupation of a vicious ethnic militia of "Killers-Without-Borders", with the complicity of the Kinshasa government. Rumours are rampant in Kinshasa of their integration into the government without going through the cumbersome electoral process--the prerequisite of the coalition of parties that share ministerial posts in Kinshasa. A new war is definitely brewing in the Congo...
For conspiring to put his own people under the yoke of a foreign country and for endangering the sovereignty and the security of his country, President Joseph Kabila of the DRC is on top of my list of African scumbags of 2009.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame, the mastermind of the mineral control (Lemarchand states that the formidable 50,000 to 100,000-strong Rwandan Defence Forces are unsustainable without tapping into Congo’s minerals) and the ethnic “demographic engineering” in eastern Congo, shares with the Congolese President the infamy of being one of the two African scumbags of the year 2009.
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