Ben Affleck: Discusses Violence in Congo

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US CONGRESSMAN SMITH STATEMENT ON CONFLICT IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

http://adamsmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=312682

Contact: Ben Halle 202-570-2771

SMITH STATEMENT ON CONFLICT IN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO  Feel Free To Share This Page Slashdot Del.icio.us Google Digg Reddit Newsvine Furl Yahoo Facebook   Washington, Nov 24 - House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith (WA-09) released the following statement on escalating violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC):  "I condemn the ongoing violence in Eastern Congo and the March 23 Movement (M23) takeover of Goma.  M23 rebels are responsible for war crimes, and countless attacks against innocent women and children.  Their actions in Goma and continued ambition to seize cities in the east and across the country stand in violation of international law and could potentially destabilize the region at large. "The United States and the United Nations must continue to actively engage leaders in the international community to work towards a solution to this conflict.  It is critical that the people in the DRC are protected and rebel groups are prevented from wreaking further havoc in this vulnerable part of the world."

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Gaza grabs the headlines as Congo once more descends into chaos

(http://m.guardiannews.com/commentisfree/2012/nov/25/ian-birrell-congo-rwanda-civil-war?cat=commentisfree&type=article)

Gaza grabs the headlines as Congo once more descends into chaos

Conflict in the Middle East is overshadowing the bloody events in central Africa

M23 rebels stand guard outside the Goma football stadium as the M23 rebel spokesman, Lt Col Vianney Kazarama, gives a speech. Photograph: Tim Freccia/EPA

Ian Birrell

The Observer, Sun 25 Nov 2012 00.06 GMT

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Once again, the apparently insoluble struggle between Israel and Palestine has flared up before flickering into uneasy standoff. As usual, world leaders issued fierce warnings, diplomats flew in and the media flooded the region to cover the mayhem as both sides spewed out the empty cliches of conflict. After eight days of fighting, nearly 160 people lay dead.

Meanwhile, 2,300 miles further south, events took a sharp turn for the worse in another interminable regional war. This one also involves survivors of genocide ruthlessly focused on securing their future at any cost. But the resulting conflict is far bloodier, far more brutal, far more devastating, far more destructive – yet it gains scarcely a glance from the rest of the world.

Such is the cycle of despair in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – scene of massacres, of mass rape, of children forced to fight, of families fleeing in fear again and again, so many sordid events that rarely make the headlines. It can seem a conflict of crushing complexity rooted in thorny issues of identity and race, involving murderous militias with an alphabet of acronyms and savagely exploited by grasping outsiders. But consider one simple fact: right now, there is the risk of another round breaking out in the deadliest conflict since the Second World War.

If you missed the fleeting news reports, a rebel army of 1,500 men waltzed into Goma, a city of one million people, on Tuesday. In doing so, they humiliated not just the useless Congolese government but also the hapless blue helmets of the biggest United Nations peacekeeping mission, costing nearly £1bn a year. There are so many peacekeepers and development agencies in Goma it has become a boom town, home to some of the most expensive housing in Africa. Yet again, all these people proved impotent.

The leaders of this insurgent force, the M23, have declared their aim to march across this vast country to capture the capital, Kinshasa. Since it is backed by Rwanda and Uganda, which used proxy armies to do this once before in 1997, such threats cannot be dismissed. Joseph Kabila, the Congolese president, who, through fear of a coup, corruption and incompetence, castrated his own military, is reported to have responded by asking Angola to send troops to save him.

It is all a dismal echo of the Great African War, which officially ended in 2003 but dribbled on for another five years. This began when Rwanda and Uganda invaded in 1998, saw 11 countries from Angola to Zimbabwe involved and left more than five million dead and millions more displaced. There were war crimes on all sides as armies brutalised those unfortunate people living above the fabulous seams of minerals that fuelled the fighting.

It is hard to fathom the real aims of M23, formed earlier this year by mutinous Congolese Tutsi army officers. It could be they hope the Kabila government will implode or it may be they wish to create an independent state in the east of the country. One thing is clear: the international community needs to take tough and urgent action to stop a festering sore from poisoning a huge chunk of Africa once again.

The west bears some responsibility for the latest act in the Congolese tragedy. Not just because the ethnic divisions that cause such fear were inflamed during dark years of Belgian misrule. Nor simply because we gobble up those minerals that fund the warlords. But because at the heart of the horror in a country the size of western Europe is the tiny nation of Rwanda, darling of western donors seeking to assuage their guilt over inaction during its own genocide.

Britain and America in particular have lionised a regime guilty of ghastly internal repression and gruesome foreign adventurism, with catastrophic consequences for millions of Congolese. Admirers of Paul Kagame, the despotic Rwandan president, praise his country's economic development, ignoring that it is part-financed by trade in minerals plundered and pillaged from a ravaged neighbour. As far back as 2001, a Congolese rebel leader admitted such theft was Rwandan state policy.

Meanwhile, the west ignored repeated war crimes committed by this regime. The first invasion, originally to drive out Hutu genocidaires who fled over the Congo border and were allowed to regroup by aid organisations, led to an estimated 300,000 deaths of innocent refugees. One expert called this a genocide of attrition. The second invasion sparked even worse carnage. UN and human rights investigators reported how Rwandan troops and their allies slaughtered children, women and elderly people, often with the crudest weapons such as knives, ropes and stones.

Yet western leaders hailed Kagame as the modern face of Africa and pumped vast aid into his arms. Britain is the biggest bilateral donor; we directly funded agencies of repression, then led moves for Rwanda to join the Commonwealth. The links between our two countries are alarmingly close: Andrew Mitchell, our former aid minister, invited me last year to meet Rwanda's head of intelligence, a regular visitor to his Whitehall office. Meanwhile, Tony Blair advises Kagame on "governance", even while swanning around seeking peace in the Middle East.

Kagame angrily denies any involvement in the Congolese unrest. He always does, but the evidence is too strong to ignore. The report by UN investigators tying Rwandan military officials to the revolt insisted on five independent witness accounts before including information; their findings were endorsed by human rights groups and journalists. Yet again, the stories of abuse by their allies are revolting: the youngest recorded rape victim is eight years old, while a pregnant woman aged 25 was shot dead resisting rape.

After weeks of prevarication, Britain has finally admitted evidence of Rwandan support for M23 was "credible". Now we must make up for supporting this monstrous regime by cutting all aid, imposing tough sanctions and seeking war crimes proceedings against Kagame and his senior officials. The UN needs to review its peacekeeping mandate in Congo. Rwanda is set to join the UN Security Council in January, even as fears grow it may end up with a pliable client state carved out in eastern Congo.

Rwanda is far from the only villain in this drama. Uganda, another western ally, is also linked again to the latest unrest, the president's own brother accused of backing the M23. But Rwanda is the cause of much of the trouble. The truth is that six times as many people have died already in the Congolese wars as died in the Rwandan genocide. Time to say never again – or does the blood of Congo not count?

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http://www.thenation.com/article/171417/washingtons-role-renewed-violence-dr-congo

Washington's Role in the Renewed Violence in DR Congo

James North | November 21, 2012

An M23 soldier guards weapons returned by the government's army in Goma city, November 21, 2012. Reuters/James Akena
 
At first, the latest awful news from the Democratic Republic of Congo sounds like just another installment of an ongoing saga common in the Western media, "Vicious African Tribal Factions Hate Each Other." Several thousand armed predators who call themselves the M23 Movement and are inappropriately described as "rebels" have just seized control of Goma, a regional capital, and the renewed fighting is adding to a death toll that has already risen above 5 million since the Second Congo War started in 1998.

Most mainstream Western press reports are treating the upsurge in violence as a purely local or regional dispute, and the conflict may seem incomprehensible to outsiders. In fact, the tragedy is by no means a merely African affair. The outbreak of fighting is also the result of a colossal failure by US foreign policy–makers dating back to the mid-1990s, aided and abetted by an ill-led United Nations peacekeeping force that stood by as the M23 seized Goma.

Rwanda borders DR Congo to the east, and is deeply implicated in the renewed fighting. Two UN investigations this year have already found that Rwanda is sustaining the M23 force; the most recent UN report, in October, charges that M23 is actually ultimately commanded by Rwanda's defense minister, James Kabarebe. Observers in Goma are reporting that M23 is armed with sophisticated weapons, including 120-millimeter mortars and night-vision goggles, which the group could not have acquired on its own.

But ever since Bill Clinton's presidency, American officials have been mesmerized by the post-genocide leader of Rwanda, Paul Kagame. Over the past three administrations, US leaders, along with certain American journalists, have repeatedly and consistently overlooked or made excuses for Rwandan crimes.

Rwanda boasts that its economic growth is turning it into a prosperous high-tech nation, an East African Singapore. In fact, the country is still poor, and 40 percent of the government's budget is foreign aid, which could give the United States, Britain and other large donors tremendous leverage. But despite the persuasive evidence earlier this year that Rwanda was behind M23, all the Obama administration did was cut a token $200,000 in military aid. In 2011, total US aid to Rwanda was $107.2 million; the 2012 figure is slated at $196.4 million.

The M23 armed group is dangerous. A September report by Human Rights Watch found it guilty of "summary executions, rapes, and forced recruitment" in the areas of eastern Congo that it already controlled before it conquered Goma. Human Rights Watch added that "Rwandan officials may be complicit in war crimes through their continued military assistance to M23 forces."

Visitors to Rwanda today are understandably impressed by the reconstruction since the 1994 genocide. Government agencies work efficiently, streets are clean, and investment is pouring in. The Millennium Village project in the Bugesera district of southeastern Rwanda is making significant advances in health and education, in what could be a model for other poor countries.

These unquestionable achievements hide a more sinister reality. Rwanda first invaded the DR Congo in 1996, saying it intended to destroy the former genocidal killers who had been launching attacks while hiding in refugee camps just inside Congo. But in retaliating, the Rwandan army went far beyond a legitimate need to protect its own people. Rwandan soldiers chased and slaughtered refugees deep inside Congo, as painfully documented in A Continent for the Taking (2004), a vital book by journalist Howard French, who was there (see also Tristan McConnell, "Rwanda's Other Genocide," [1] The Nation, September 17, 2010).

Despite the mounting evidence of Rwanda's dark side, its leader, Paul Kagame, continues to enjoy sympathy among certain American writers. As late as 2009, Philip Gourevitch, who has reported from the region for years, wrote an admiring account in The New Yorker, in which he noted without comment that Kagame won the 2003 election with 95 percent of the vote but failed to mention that Kagame had arrested his predecessor as president on questionable charges and jailed him for three years. Another otherwise able journalist, Stephen Kinzer, published A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It (2008), an uncritical embarrassment that Kagame could have used as his campaign biography.

Like this article? Support this journalism with a $5 donation now. [2]

Over the years, Rwanda has continued to intervene in eastern Congo. It claims it is there to prevent the resurgence of the génocidaires, but the former killers are no longer a significant force. Rwanda's real aim is more venal; it is stealing minerals from eastern Congo, which has significant deposits of gold, cassiterite and coltan. Rwanda's support for the M23 these days is mainly a cross-border thievery racket, which has been documented by UN inquiries.

But the UN itself is also responsible for the tragedy in eastern Congo. The UN has an 18,000-strong multinational peacekeeping force already stationed in the country, including troops right in Goma. The UN force, known as Monusco by its French initials, stood by as M23 invaded and seized the city. Congolese critics have for years bitterly disparaged Monusco as merely "tourists." In an October report, the respected International Crisis Group also indicted the UN troops for passivity: "Despite Monusco's superiority in numbers and firepower, it has not opposed the advance of M23 and it has therefore failed to carry out the essential element of its mandate: to protect the civilian population."

So far, the M23 invaders who are occupying Goma have not started to kill civilians, although that could change quickly, based on the armed band's history of murder and rape. But simply by launching attacks in an already fragile environment, the Rwandan/M23 alliance is in effect sentencing thousands of Congolese people to death. 

The country is the poorest in the world; 70 percent of its people are already undernourished. More than 95 percent of those who have died so far in Congo did not perish during actual combat (for more, particularly on the exploitation of Congo's mineral-rich Katanga province by Western multinationals, see North, "Economic Crimes in Congo," [3] The Nation, July 24, 2012). By not stopping M23 months ago, the UN peacekeeping force guaranteed that disease and hunger will claim even more victims from among the exhausted and weak civilians who are fleeing for their lives.

The crisis in eastern Congo may look like an African failure, but it is not. The overwhelming majority of the Congolese people are not violent, and are simply trying to survive with courage and humanity. The crisis is an American failure. It is a failure by the world community. And without dramatic reversals in policy, innocent African people will continue to pay with their lives for mistakes made by the powerful, elsewhere.

For more on how Washington is fueling conflicts abroad, read Phyllis Bennis on "Israel's War on Gaza [4]."

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THAT WHO KEEPS SILENT IN THE MIDST OF TYRANY IS AS GUILTY OF OPPRESSION AS THE TYRANT HIMSELF. Please use the following link: https://ffdrwanda.org/Donate.html  to DONATE to the struggle for democracy in Rwanda.Youthdemocrats is an Internet Forum aiming at furthering the  activities of the Foundation for Freedom and Democracy in Rwanda, Inc.We expect postings of only the highest quality, appropriate to the  ongoing struggle for Freedom, Democracy and Justice in Rwanda, rather  than personal messages.Members of this group remain solely responsible for the content of  their messages, and agree to indemnify and hold harmless the  Foundation for Freedom and Democracy in Rwanda with respect to any  claim based upon transmission of messages.

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WHY THE KAMPALA SUMMIT WAS A TOTAL FAILURE

WHY THE KAMPALA SUMMIT WAS A TOTAL FAILURE

So the International Conference on Great Lakes (ICGLR) summit in Kampala is over, boycotted by the principal culprit in the tragedy, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and presided over by President Museveni of Uganda. Though it had been widely publicized that twelve Heads of States would attend the summit, only President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya and President...

Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania showed up. It has been established, credibly and compellingly by the UN Group of Experts Report that Rwanda and Uganda are behind the so-called M23 rebellion in DRC.

It is self-evident that the international community is not interested in the plight of Congolese people. The summit was notable in the absence of other Africans and African institutions. The absence of concerned Africans and institutions was compounded by the much expected absence of the rest of the international community.

The so-called International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) whose establishment Rwanda opposed until Kagame was comforted that it would be an ineffectual body, is a largely ignored body. Unless he can manipulate it and bend it to his wishes, Kagame has no respect for it. Like Kagame, Museveni knows that ICGLR is a toothless tool to be brandished to attract the attention of the western powers and international community on the one hand, while keeping some concerned Africans and international community from acting in response to the endless crises in the Great lakes region on the other. "Leave it to us, we shall handle it ourselves", Museveni tells Americans and Europeans who are not about to shed their blood to defend Africans dying in DRC. When asked by concerned constituencies as to what is being done about the bleeding of DRC and Rwanda, western powers will say, " O, we support Africans to solve their own problems through regional bodies like ICGLR". This is a coded way of saying, " if Africans are butchering themselves, let them put their house in order".

President Kagame, the most notorious culprit in the DRC saga, decided to snub his peers in the region, and did not show up. That is his typical arrogance and disdain towards other Africans and sections of the international community that increasingly look at him as a villain who presides over a rogue state. What did the summit hope to achieve without the offending party in the conflict? Could we assume that he knew so well that President Museveni, with whom they have a history of adventure into DRC, would take care of their mutual interests? Nothing of substance came out of the summit. The whole diplomatic circus was a public relations gimmick to mislead African and international opinion.

It is indeed ridiculous that the summit decided that "one company of an international neutral force, one company of the Congolese army (FARDC) and one company of M23" would be deployed in Goma. Essentially, two companies ( neutral force + Congolese army) and one company of enemy forces (M23+ Rwanda+ Uganda) would be dancing together in Goma! Where over 20, 000 UN peacekeepers with an annual budget of over 1.5 billion US dollars have failed, how will the two penniless companies succeed?

The most outrageous outcome of the summit is the futile provision that Rwandan and Ugandan generals are to oversee, supervise and lead the cessation of hostilities and peace process in DRC. General Kabarebe ( Minister of Defence of Rwanda), General Kayonga ( Chief of Defence Forces of Rwanda) and other Rwandan senior officers have been identified by the UN Group of Experts Report as the architects and operational leaders of the M23 war-making effort. Uganda's military officers, notably General Salim Saleh ( President Museveni's young brother), General Kale Kayihura ( Uganda's Chief of Police) and other Ugandan officers have been mentioned by the same UN Report. If the international community was interested in ending the conflict, there should be robust sanctions against these individuals and their commanders-in-chief. Museveni and Kagame sat and decided that they would supervise and lead the sham process. The lions have decided they will baby-sit the lambs.

The Congolese people should set aside their differences and unite to reject this latest Kagame aggression against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Africans and the rest of the international community should unite in support of the Congolese and Rwandan brothers and sisters to get rid of the brutal regime of President Kagame that has brought so much death and destruction to Congolese and Rwandan people.

Africans must mobilize and organize, not agonize.

We shall win!

Theogene Rudasingwa

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