President Felix Tshisekedi welcomed Belgian troops to Kindu, DR Congo, on March 17, 2025 – 300 to 400 commandos with tanks and drones. The next morning, Tshisekedi flew first-class to Qatar, shook hands with peace and vowed to honour EAC-SADC peace talks. Aside from the glaringly obvious - preaching peace while stoking war - it's the Congolese president’s choice of partners that resounds with something more dire: Stockholm Syndrome. Stockholm Syndrome is when victims – hostages, the abused – start siding with their tormentors. It’s named after a 1973 bank heist in Sweden where captives bonded with their robbers, refusing to testify against them. In DR Congo’s case, it’s Kinshasa’s obsession with their abusive ex-colonisers – a severe case of kissing the hand that chokes you. Belgium slaughtered millions under Leopold II, then murdered DR Congo’s statesman, Patrice Lumumba, for daring to believe in the unity of all Congolese and their control and mutual benefit of its minerals. Their apology? Mailing his tooth back in 2022. Now, in 2025, Tshisekedi welcomes them like white saviours. The ailment of DR Congo is not Rwanda; at best, Rwanda is a symptom of a more underlying cause: this mentality of ‘divide and destroy each other that Belgium left our region with and is back to help achieve. Dr Alain Dextese, former Belgian senator, following a visit to eastern DR Congo said: I’m a doctor – when treating a patient, you first diagnose the illness correctly. If the diagnosis is wrong, you can’t treat them. The international community needs a proper diagnosis of the Kivu problem, then a solution. Right now, they’re giving the patient the wrong medicine. Tshisekedi’s Belgian cure? It’s not medicine – it’s poison, prescribed by an abuser he’s simply too addicted to quit. Tshisekedi’s Belgian fix isn’t healing Congo – it’s feeding the syndrome, doubling down on the wrong cure. History is a brutal teacher, screaming at Tshisekedi: they don’t really care about us. Recent decades prove neo-colonialism is a dead end for regional leaders waging wars of genocide and division. The prophecy has already been fulfilled; Former President Juvenal Habyarimana bet on Belgium in Rwanda – his regime torched its own people after they killed him, leaving only flames and ashes in 1994. Mobutu leaned on them in the then Zaire—trained up, propped up, then crashed, leaving worse chaos behind for his people. It’s a fool’s game to trust those who don’t love Congo, who rank African lives below their pets. I hate saying this to a leader and people scarred deepest by these hands, but if Patrice Lumumba were here, he would not let this deal be. Belgium’s cancer of segregation, engineered to harm DR Congo, is one they abandon when it explodes, yet Tshisekedi invites their ‘flop fix’, chasing doomed solutions outside of the region. President Tshisekedi doesn't need a bigger force or more muscle, he needs to sober up and snap out of it. No matter how tough his recruits, ignoring the ailment causing this mess - state killings, refugee crises, the peace his people never got - means he’ll never beat fighters with a cause. AFC/M23 bleed for human rights their own state stole from them. Like every abuser, Belgium’s here for minerals and power, not miracles and the people. This is a plea to President Tshisekedi and the Congolese who are blind to the persecution of their fellow people: break Stockholm Syndrome’s mental chokehold, or you’ll only break DR Congo down further. If Lumumba lived, he’d never allow this – he’d guard Congo’s unity, not hand it back to its butcher.
