Another ceasefire designed in Angola: Can the Tshisekedi regime be trusted?

Here we go again with another ceasefire, this one signed in Angola last Tuesday, that aims (for the umpteenth time) to stop conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The Presidency of Angola made the new development public through an announcement that the foreign affairs ministers of DRC, Angola and Rwanda had agreed on a ceasefire between parties to the Conflict in eastern DRC. ALSO READ: Second Luanda meeting calls for ceasefire in eastern DR Congo This latest iteration of Congolese ceasefires was to go into force at midnight (entering Sunday) 4th August. However, even before then, the DR Congo ministry of communication was airing a video that exhorted armed confrontation with Rwanda. It was more fantasy production modeled upon Hollywood war films than anything else: a narrator melodramatically droning on about “defending the fatherland against Rwanda”; footage of supposed Congolese soldiers performing acts of valor under immense pressure, and so on. An image of Tshisekedi – the exalted commander in chief – appears in the closing shot, his voice proclaiming in French: “we will win this war.” Coming as it did after their minister signed the ceasefire agreement, one has to ask, once again, when can these people ever be serious? Here they were, their president proudly appearing in a video that declared war on Rwanda, so why waste everyone’s time, the leadership of Angola, Rwanda, themselves, participating in a meeting supposed to produce a ceasefire? Do they mean they want a ceasefire with M23, but war with Rwanda? Also how do they claim they want a ceasefire while war mongering at the same time? Make it make sense! Tshisekedi and his gang insist on dragging Rwanda into their country’s affairs (due to their utter and complete failures of governance) when the only thing Kigali has ever asked is peaceful co-existence. The Congo regime is always shouting that “Rwanda is their aggressor”. At the same time it openly backs the terrorist FDLR whose goal is, and always has been to bring civil strife and genocide back to Rwanda (after they failed “to finish the task” the first time in 1994). Make it make sense! Tshisekedi and his people have failed to realize the significance of the M23 as a movement that fights for the rights of its people – Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese communities of the east whose rights they violate, killing, raping, inflicting all sorts of atrocities on those communities. ALSO READ: Rwanda, DR Congo, Angola intelligence experts to examine FDLR neutralisation plan Kinshasa fails to see that M23, which now is in a coalition with the Congo River Alliance, is a movement that (rightly) sees Tshisekedi as an existential threat and will fight him to the end, possibly even causing his downfall if he isn’t careful. For one thing it is very difficult, not mentioning almost unheard of, for a morally bankrupt regime that’s chosen ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity targeting a particular group to prevail in its evil goals. The Congolese ruler and his people seem to imagine that by engaging in transparently unserious games, like insistently repeating the lie that “Rwanda controls M23” (as a ploy to deflect attention from their failures of governance) is what will help them. But any objective person with two brain cells will see through the shenanigans for what they are: repeatedly crying Rwanda (for problems that are purely internal) is the strategy an incompetent government seized upon long ago, to gain legitimacy. When Rwanda politely goes to whatever forum it is invited, by hosts trying to achieve ceasefires, peace or stability, of course Muyaya and the likes then exploit that to say, “you see, Rwanda is speaking for M23!” When in fact not participating would invite more opprobrium upon Kigali. In a better world, people everywhere including those in the West who have chosen to ally themselves with Kinshasa, would be asking their client Tshisekedi what he is doing hosting a Rwandan force, FDLR, whose genocidal history is well known. Kinshasa should long ago have been taken to task – by those in the West that like to label Rwanda as the trouble causer – to explain why it not only backs FDLR, but has actually integrated this militia into the Congolese military as it mounts its campaigns of ethnic cleansing in eastern Congo, the ultimate target being Rwanda. But no one will do that, because peace isn’t what they are interested in. They are more concerned with pleasing, even appeasing Tshisekedi, obviously to maintain access to the Congolese minerals that feed their industry and economies. However when they avoid asking Tshisekedi the hard questions, they only fuel his belligerence against the victims of his ethnic cleansing in the DRC, and in his frequently unhinged rhetoric against Rwanda. Not only that, those who from their Western capitals abet the Congolese president’s worst excesses also like to pile on against the man’s victims. They frequently echo his unfounded verbal attacks against either M23, or Rwanda, while giving their client a complete free pass. The sanctions against officials of M23 are part of all that. Do they have no idea that sanctions mean completely nothing to a people facing an existential threat?

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Another ceasefire designed in Angola: Can the Tshisekedi regime be trusted?