Editor,

Allow me to react to the story, "UN envoy calls for urgent offensive against FDLR” (The New Times, January 17).

Paroles, paroles, paroles! If words from all these worthies were bullets, the genocidal FDLR would have been wiped out of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo long ago!

By the way, just for my edification, could someone remind me again about how many ‘special envoys’ for the DRC from this, that and every other country or entity in the world there are? I currently count about six of them that I know of. And let’s not mention the long list of an alphabet soup of forces in the theatre allegedly there to eradicate the FDLR—part of that soup, of course: Monusco, Monusco-FIB, with contingents from TPDF, SANDF, MDF, FARDC, and many more.

With all these people tripping all over each other to give the impression of doing something—anything—to fulfill their mandate of FDLR-eradication and neutralizing of illegal armed groups in the DRC, I am surprised the UN hasn’t yet thought about appointing a traffic manager to reduce the likelihood that they might continuously bump into each other.

In brief, one can’t help but be highly impressed by the masterly capacity of ‘international diplomacy’ to spin pure air into a semblance of action, and its ability to string this out for what seems like an eternity (now 16 years and counting, at 1.5 billion dollars a year)—all the while managing to keep a straight face.

Mwene Kalinda

*******************I feel uncomfortable to see so many statements being made about what is going to be done to put FDLR out of action by various actors except DRC. Other actors are behaving like as if it is a new programme. One gets equally disappointed by the silence of the DRC authorities yet these criminals are operating on their soil, and raping women and killing innocent people.

Karemera