President Paul Kagame has once again called on DR Congo’s leaders to seek solutions to their country’s security challenges (which often spill over their borders, including posing a threat to Rwanda’s security), instead of engaging in a never-ending blame game. Successive governments in the Congo have chosen the easy path and blamed others for their internal problems, instead of taking a long, hard look at the root causes of insecurity and perpetual conflict. By blaming others for their own problems DR Congo’s leaders have sought to deflect attention and avoid any form of responsibility in foiling countless attempts at finding a lasting solution to security challenges. Indeed, this has only served to undermine and frustrate regional and international efforts to address these problems, with ordinary citizens the ones to bear the brunt of the unfulfilled promises, blame games and a general lack of political will to tackle the problems. This has been the situation for the last 25 years or so. To end this cycle, Congolese leaders need to finally break free from their penchant to export homegrown problems to neighbours and turn internal affairs into someone else’s business, and rather take deliberate steps toward finding a durable, inclusive solution. As with their problems themselves, the solutions too must primarily be homegrown. The other mistake by successive Congolese leaders is to continuously downplay the threat posed by the genocidal FDLR militia, whose roots lie in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, and which continues to be armed by and fight alongside Congolese forces from time to time. This, while at the same time propping up the militia with arms and other supplies. President Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi has also played the same card in a blatant attempt to absolve his army of responsibility in the current security crisis in Congo’s east, in part fuelled by Congo’s collaboration with the FDLR. Claims that previous joint operations between Rwanda and the Congo weakened the genocidal outfit so much it can’t threaten Rwanda do not hold. Even if the militia was down to a few hundreds of fighters, it’s not the strength of the outfit in terms of numbers, but rather the deadly ideology they espouse and continue to perpetuate among Congolese communities that represent the biggest threat to not only Congo and Rwanda, but the wider region. The same ideology that led to the merciless slaughter of more than a million lives in Rwanda only less than three decades ago and which is increasingly gaining a foothold in the Congo, as evidenced by alarming levels of hate speech and ethnic attacks in recent months. But, it’s also a blatant lie that the genocidal FDLR militia poses no direct threat to Rwanda’s security because it has shelled Rwanda’s territory from across the border at least on three occasions this year alone, killing civilians and destroying property. The truth is that no outsider will impose a solution on the Congo crisis. It is the Congolese people, led by their own government, that can lead the way toward sustainable peace inside the Congo. And, with the rest of the region, including Rwanda, willing to support, if Kinshasa mustered the necessary political will there is no doubt that the cycle of violence and wars in the Congo can finally be put to an end.
