The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is now on a charm offensive in Africa to regain the US popularity which was lost ostensibly during the Trump administration, and to counter the attempts from Russia to get more African countries on their side. 

He is now in South Africa, a country that has lost itself a lot of credit for its foreign and internal policies in the recent past. Blinken will continue his trip to Kinshasa, where expectations are very high that he would openly condemn Rwandans for their alleged support to M-23 rebels in eastern DRC. Congolese authorities won’t hesitate to classify his visit as a success.

In the meantime, there has been information from a leaked report of the UN Group of Experts (GoE), that there was "solid evidence that the RDF provided soldiers and logistics to the M-23”. This came out at a crucial moment: before the visit of Blinken, and amid a series of protests against the UN Mission in DRC (MONUSCO) in the streets of Goma, Beni and Butembo.

For the past 20 years of its existence in DRC, MONUSCO has done nothing to stop the violence in the eastern part of the country. It has only served as a logistical back up to the Congolese army (FARDC), which is considered by many as the most destructive and corrupt institutions in the country. 

More than 100 violent or less violent militia groups were also created under MONUSCO’s watch, and it has not been able to stop the influx of combatants of the FDLR (which is officially labelled as a terrorist group by the US) and its splinter groups, into the ranks of the FARDC to fight against the M-23.

Few weeks before the anti-MONUSCO protests, the Congolese presidency had also tried to blame most of the country’s misery to the Tutsi community and the Rwandan government – although many Congo watchers saw this as a trick by the Congolese Government to cover up its own incompetence and a way to postpone the upcoming presidential elections.

While other rebel groups in the far north of Goma, such as the ADF-Nalu and the CODECO, were creating more havoc and killing innocent people; the FARDC and FDLR started attacking M-23 positions on the slopes of the Bisoke volcanoes area. The M-23 was very weak at that time, but they reorganized themselves and started mobilizing new recruits. It is indeed a fact that some of them were found in the circles of demobilized RDF soldiers. But they were born in Congo, and for them it was a natural thing to join their brothers and sisters who were now under threat.

If you visit nowadays a town like Gisenyi and you talk to most of the people there (if they can trust you enough), they will admit that many of their sons and daughters are now fighting in the M-23. 

They went there out of their free will. They are nearly all members of the Bagogwe clan, a group of Tutsis that was living in the Rutshuru plains, the Masisi highlands and parts of northern Rwanda. Before the Berlin Conference, more than 100 years ago, this region was all part of a territory that was reigned by Tutsi kings (abami). 

It will therefore be very hard for Blinken not to pronounce himself in a proper way, if the international press and the Congolese local press – whose majority believe that Rwanda is the main culprit for everything that went and still goes wrong in the DRC – start bombarding their questions on him.

However, the UN GoE leaked report shows numerous contradictions: