Keep a close watch on Eastern DRC

Editor,Refer to Pan Butamire’s article, “Can the Great Lakes Region dare hope for peace?” (The New Times on November 9).No one should hold their breath waiting for the heterodox Monusco (FIB)/FARDC (FDLR) to go after any other armed group except, perhaps, an inconsequential and uncooperative Mai-Mai group from the scores that operate in Eastern DRC.And even that will be purely for show. To give Martin Kobler (head of Monusco) and his boss an opportunity to claim their proclaimed goal to rid the DRC of armed groups other than the FARDC, as Mr Butamire states, the largest and most dangerous of the armed groups, and now even more so that it has incorporated large numbers of FDLR genocidaires in many of its frontline units under the benevolent gaze of TPDF commanders whose President’s indulgent views of the FDLR, echo those of the ultimate Monusco boss in New York.No one should be so naive as to believe that any of this lot has or ever had any intention to go after FDLR, the militia behind the death of a million innocent Rwandans during the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi. If anything, they wanted to neutralise all those determined to resist or even actively seek to rout this genocidal militia that has now become a significant part of the “Congolese national army”.The only group they were interested in destroying was M23 because it had the wrong “genetic identity”, in the unforgettable words of DRC Foreign minister Raymond Tshibanda before the UN Security Council, and because it did not accept orders from those who really control Eastern DRC (certainly it isn’t President Joseph Kabila and his band of looters).This so-called alliance might next go for Mai-Mai Raia Mutomboki for it’s violently anti-all-things-Kinyarwanda, including the valued FDLR.Am I being a paranoid conspiracy nut? I hope so. But I very much fear I am not, knowing who is weaving the threads in Eastern DRC and who they have as their raft of sleeping (but hardly slumbering) partners.A continuous close watch of what is being hatched in DRC will be in priority order.Mwene Kalinda, Kigali

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Keep a close watch on Eastern DRC