Congo Tutsi dissident offers help disarm Hutu rebels
By John Kanyunyu
KIROLIRWE, Congo - A dissident Congolese Tutsi rebel commander said on Thursday he was ready to help Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda to fight and disarm Rwandan Hutu rebels who operate in eastern Congo.
General Bosco Ntaganda, wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in Congo, offered this as his contribution to internationally-backed efforts to end years of fighting in the eastern borderlands.
"We're going to build a peace," Ntaganda, nicknamed "The Terminator", told Reuters in an interview at Kirolirwe in Congo's North Kivu Province.
The renegade commander has caused a split in Congo's Tutsi-dominated National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) rebel movement by announcing last week that he had overthrown veteran CNDP leader Laurent Nkunda. Nkunda denies this and says he heads the Tutsi insurgency.
Before the split, Nkunda's CNDP rebels, who say they are defending Congo's Tutsi minority against their ethnic Hutu enemies of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), routed the U.N.-backed Congolese army in North Kivu late last year, displacing a quarter of a million refugees.
Under international pressure to end fighting which triggered a humanitarian emergency, the governments of Congo and Rwanda agreed a plan to forcibly disarm the FDLR. Its presence in eastern Congo is seen as a root cause of the conflict.
The Great Lakes neighbours are due to start the anti-FDLR operation before the end of March, and Ntaganda said fighters loyal to him would join Congolese government troops and their Mai-Mai militia allies in subduing the Rwandan Hutu rebels.
"There's an accord between Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda to hunt down the FDLR, and the CNDP will be part of it ... we're all going to turn our guns towards the FDLR," said Ntaganda, surrounded by fellow rebel officers.
Congo experts say a clear division has opened up in the rebel CNDP's leadership between Nkunda and Ntaganda, the officer who was previously his top military commander.
They say it is not immediately clear how this will affect peace talks in Nairobi, Kenya, between Congolese government envoys and negotiators sent by Nkunda.
The talks aim to fix a lasting ceasefire in North Kivu.
ETHNIC HATRED
The ethnic enmity between Tutsis and Hutus has fuelled years of conflict in eastern Congo since neighbouring Rwanda's 1994 genocide in which Hutu soldiers and militia killed 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus.
The genocide spilled rebels and refugees over the border into Congo, sowing the seeds for further violence.
In Thursday's interview, Ntaganda said he had the support of "all of the CNDP's army". "Since my declaration that I had toppled Nkunda, not a single shot has been heard while I walk freely everywhere within the CNDP's army," Ntaganda said.
"Nkunda's overthrow wasn't only my action, other officers contributed," he added.
Nkunda, who launched his eastern Tutsi rebellion in 2004 following the end of a wider 1998-2003 war in Congo, has said Ntaganda faces disciplinary action within the CNDP, although there has been no attempt so far to detain or stop him.
In April last year, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Ntaganda, accusing him of recruiting children under 15 to fight in an ethnic-based conflict in northeast Ituri district.
Some human rights campaigners say they believe Ntaganda may have broken with Nkunda because he thought the CNDP leader was going to hand him over following a massacre of civilians in the North Kivu town of Kiwanja in November.
Ntaganda said his fighters joining Congolese troops and pro-government militia to fight the Rwandan Hutu rebels would help restore peace. "The population should not panic, but should separate themselves from the FDLR," he said.
Source:
REUTERS AFRICA
posted by Mamadou Kouyate @ 7:18 AM
2 Comments:
The presence of FDLR Hutu rebels in eastern DRC is not the root cause of the conlict.
Instead, the presence of FDLR rebels in DRC is a direct consequence of the military coup which put the RPF on power in Rwanda.
Up to date, the RPF leadership continues to spread lies that its decision to take power by force in Rwanda was directly linked to its willingness and determination to end the Rwandan genocide in 1994.
This baseless argument does not stick at all since every Rwandan knows that the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was not the cause of the Rwandan civil war which began in 1990.
Instead, the Rwandan genocide of 1994 was a direct consequence of the Rwandan civil war which spanned from 1990 to 1994.
In addition, the Rwandan genocide was triggered by the terrorist attack against the Rwandan presidential aircraft on April 6th, 1994.
Numerous reliable sources attest that this terrorist attack is the triggering event of Rwandan genocide and that it was ordered and executed by the RPF.
In 1994, the RPF was indeed in a desperate need of a strong argument so that it can resume the Rwandan civil war which had been ended by the Arusha Peace Agreement signed between the RPF and the Rwandan government on August 4th, 1993.
The RPF wanted to resume the war because the application of the Arusha Peace Agreement would have lead in just 22 months to democratic elections and the RPF was strongly convinced that there was no way it could have won these elections.
The RPF was in great fear of a strong coalition that would have emerged between MRND, MDR, and PSD political parties before and/ or after these elections.
This great fear was somehow real: in neighboring Burundi, the political party of Pierre Buyoya (UPRONA) had just lost the democratic elections.
On one hand, the RPF back-up base in Burundi, the second largest back-up base both politically and militarily, was in great danger of being wiped out.
On the other hand, well-informed sources suggested that in Rwanda, MRND, MDR, and PSD political parties were gaining key allies in neighboring Burundi.
That is why the RPF decided to halt the implementation of the Arusha Peace Agreement by resuming hostilities in Rwanda.
On April 6th, 1994 the RPF fired two missiles, shot down the Falcon 50, and killed at scene two African Heads of State: the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and the Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira.
This terrorist act achieved two goals:
Firstly, by killing the Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, the RPF halted, at least temporarily, the democratic process in Burundi and stabilized its back-up base in this country.
Secondly, by killing the Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, the RPF triggered the resumption of the Rwandan civil war and at the same time halted the implementation process of the Arusha Peace Agreement.
In the aftermath of signing the Arusha Peace Agreement, the RPF deliberately resumed the recruitment of new combatants long before the April 6th 1994 terrorist act.
In strong violation of the Arusha Peace Agreement, these new RPF recruits were enlisted in the APR late in March 1994.
The consequences of this enlistment are well-known: crimes of genocide, collapse of the Rwandan government, exodus of 2.5 million Rwandans to Tanzania, then to Burundi, and finally to the DRC, which alone received more than 1.5 million Rwandan refugees in its two eastern provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu, provinces that are up to date war torn.
Moreover, from 1996 to 1997, the RPF continued to track the ex-FAR inside the DRC in order to exterminate them and install its allies in Kinshasa.
To achieve this goal, the RPF massacred at least 200,000 Rwandan refugees inside the DRC.
It even tried to conceal evidence for these mass killings by burning victim corpses and scattering the ashes away in the forest and/ or in the river.
Such a sinister plan was thwarted when a revolutionary Congolese, the late Laurent-Desire Kabila, took power in the DRC and decided to restore the sovereignty of the land.
In August 1998, the RPF launched a new war aiming at not only completing the installation of its allies in Kinshasa, but also to prevent any international criminal justice inquiry into its role in the DRC, given the extent of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by its army.
Some of these crimes had already been documented by an investigation team established by the UN Secretary-General.
This new proxy war in the DRC made it possible for many survivors of the Rwandan refugee massacres of 1996 and 1997 to stand up and defend themselves against this strenuous common enemy.
The birth of the FDLR is a direct consequence of the RPF sinister plan in the DRC.
That is the origin of the current proxy war in the province of North Kivu.
In other words, the origin of the current DRC civil war is in Kigali not in Goma or in Kinshasa. Sooner or later this problem will be solved.
This problem is the result of the RPF refusal to face free democratic elections in Rwanda.
It also is the result of the RPF inability to handle the actual state of Hutu-Tutsi problems in Rwanda.
Indeed, the RPF regime has been trying to underestimate and ignore the existence of such Hutu-Tutsi problems in Rwanda.
In Rwanda, there are nearly 85% Hutus and 14% Tutsis. Democratic elections in Rwanda would probably give back the power to a "Hutu" movement.
This analysis has always been in the RPF calculations with regard to plausible results of democratic elections in Rwanda.
The RPF suggests that such results simply denote "confusion between the ethnic majority and the political majority."
Since 1993, the RPF estimates that such results would inexorably relegate it to the opposition for an indefinite period of time.
Indeed, this is the case for the UPRONA of Pierre Buyoya in neighboring Burundi since the democratic elections of June 1993 and 2005.
This also is the case in South Africa where democratic elections have thrown the National Party of De Klerk (now renamed the Democratic Alliance) in the opposition since 1994.
That is the root cause of the current DRC crisis in the province of North Kivu.
Comme disait un des meileurs poètes di siècle dernier: "chacun a ses bêtises, et vous avez les vôtres".
Quand un génocide arrivera chez vous, expliquez-le nous. Les Tutsis du Rwanda connaissent mieux que quiconque ce qui leur a été fait et qui l'a fait ! de quoi je me mêleMr le gniacouet ?
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