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Friday, 19 October 2012

Kabarebe, Rwanda and Congo's killing fields

 

NEWSMAKER: Kabarebe, Rwanda and Congo's killing fields

Reuters –  40 mins ago

* UN report says Rwandan minister as masterminded Congo

rebellion
* Kabarebe is President Kagame's right-hand man

* Rwanda denies involvement in recent Congo conflict

Oct 19 (Reuters) - Swept up in the mid-1990s in a conflict
that has killed an estimated 5 million people, former child
soldier Gabriel struggles to reconcile his feelings towards the

man who led him into battle, James Kabarebe.

"He was very disciplined. He looked after us child soldiers.
He took time to speak to us," Gabriel, who was 12 when he became

a fighter, said of Kabarebe, Rwanda's defence minister, who was

accused by the United Nations this week of fomenting war in
neighbouring Congo.
"But when someone comes and makes war, and uses child
soldiers, he can't leave anything but bad memories behind him,"
said the former fighter, who asked that his name be changed to
protect his identity.

Right-hand man to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, Kabarebe,

53, for two decades has been a central figure shaping the often
violent history of the Central African region.
He is celebrated as a hero at home for helping lead the
Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) advance that stopped the 1994

Rwandan genocide in which some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus

were massacred by the army and Hutu extremist militias. The war
lifted Kagame to power in Kigali, and Kabarebe along with him.
Across the border in the vastly larger Democratic Republic
of Congo, however, Kabarebe is almost universally reviled for
his role in destabilising the mineral-rich but almost
ungovernable country at a cost of several million lives.
Rwanda vigorously denies the latest allegations contained in

the report of a panel charged with monitoring Congo's arms

embargo, which said Kabarebe has armed and given military
backing to the M23 rebel movement.
Fighting between M23 and Congo's army has displaced nearly a
half million people. The Tutsi-dominated insurgency, which took
up arms in April, is expanding its control over parts of North

Kivu province with additional financing from Rwandan businessmen

trading in smuggled Congolese minerals, the report stated.
Earlier findings in an interim report by the experts led to
a freezing of some foreign aid by the United States, Britain,
the European Union, Sweden and the Netherlands.
Repeated attempts by Reuters to obtain comment from, or
interviews with, Rwandan officials about the report's
allegations failed to elicit a response. Phone calls and text
messages to the defence minister, his spokesman, and his chief
of staff all went unanswered. A Rwandan government spokesperson
twice declined Reuters' requests for comment.
"SMART AND ABLE"
But those who know Kabarebe and how operates say the U.N.'s
findings do not come as a shock.
"I'm not the least surprised...He's smart. He's able. And
heaven knows he knows the territory," said Daniel Simpson, who
was the U.S. ambassador to Kinshasa in 1996.
That was the year Kabarebe led a mixed force of
gumboot-wearing Rwandans and ragged Congolese recruits 1,500 km
(900 miles) across Congo, then known as Zaire, to topple
longtime dictator Mobutu Sese Seko.
Kigali accused Mobutu of harbouring the instigators of the
Rwandan genocide, who had continued to launch raids into Rwanda
from Congolese territory.
The rebel army met little resistance as Mobutu's forces
crumbled, but it left a trail of massacred Rwandan Hutu refugees
in its wake, according to a comprehensive U.N. report on the
violence published in 2010.
Initially welcomed by the cheering residents of the
crumbling riverside capital Kinshasa, Kabarebe was even named
head of the army by Mobutu's successor, Laurent Desire Kabila,
the father of current president Joseph Kabila.
The alliance didn't last as Kabila - known popularly as
Mzee, the Swahili word for "elder" - balked at Rwanda's
pervasive influence in his new government.
"They behaved like conquerors. Mzee Kabila didn't like their
behaviour here," Congolese general Jean-Claude Kifwa, who knew
Kabarebe at the time, said in an interview. "Rwanda is poor
compared to Congo. They took the chance to pillage, to enrich
themselves."
The inevitable falling out came in 1998 with Kabila's order
expelling Rwandan troops from Congolese territory.
A few weeks later, Kabarebe secretly flew back across the
country in a daring operation to seize Kinshasa with a few
hundred men.
Though the plan was foiled when Angolan troops intervened in
support of Kabila, it marked the start of a war whose
aftershocks are still felt a decade on and which researchers
estimate has cost the lives of more than 5 million people.
"FIGHTING FOR THE BOSS"
A 2003 peace deal that officially ended the conflict left
Congo with an army cobbled together from dozens of armed groups,
among them several with ties to Rwanda.
"He has contact with Congolese officers everywhere," Kifwa
said of Kabarebe.
In media interviews since the U.N. experts interim report
revealed Rwandan links to the rebels, Kabarebe has said he used
these contacts in an attempt to stop the M23 mutiny in its
infancy.
However, the experts say he has instead provided the group
with direct military support, facilitated recruitment,
transferred weapons and ammunition, and encouraged Congolese
soldiers to join the insurgency.
"M23's de facto chain of command...culminates with the
Rwandan Minister of Defence General James Kabarebe," said the
experts, who monitor compliance with U.N. sanctions and an arms
embargo on the Congo.
If the U.N. report is correct and Kabarebe is indeed

orchestrating the M23 rebellion, it is unlikely he is acting

alone, said Gerard Prunier, an academic who has written
histories of both Rwanda's genocide and the war in Congo.
"Kabarebe is a fairly simple person. He's always fighting

for the boss...It's totally unthinkable, given the tight control

Kagame has, that he would go into this on his own."

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-“The root cause of the Rwandan tragedy of 1994 is the long and past historical ethnic dominance of one minority ethnic group to the other majority ethnic group. Ignoring this reality is giving a black cheque for the Rwandan people’s future and deepening resentment, hostility and hatred between the two groups.”

-« Ce dont j’ai le plus peur, c’est des gens qui croient que, du jour au lendemain, on peut prendre une société, lui tordre le cou et en faire une autre ».

-“The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.”

-“I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.

-“The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.”

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