How old anti-Tutsi ideology continues to shield FDLR – Part II

Let me recap: The Kinshasa-backed FDLR genocidal militia has operated in eastern DR Congo with impunity for 30 years. The real reason for its survival is that Western powers have found it useful to weaponize ethnicity to keep the Great Lakes region divided. ALSO READ: We are misreading the FDLR threat: It is dangerous incubator of genocide ideology, not just an armed group European colonial anthropologists engineered this toxic ideology. In 1907, Kandt was rewarded for his role and became Rwanda's first Resident Governor, tasked with enforcing it. The defeat of the genocidal regime in Rwanda was a reality that Kandt's staunchest defenders would never accept. ALSO READ: When sanctions become strategy: The limits of economic pressure in eastern DR Congo By 1959, the divisions this ideology had sown had turned communities against one another, fuelling a cycle of bloodshed that culminated in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The systematic extermination ended on July 4, 1994, when the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) dismantled the genocidal regime and pushed its remnants across the border into Zaire. There, the exiled genocidal leaders regrouped to later form FDLR, an armed group dedicated to re-entering Rwanda to complete its genocidal campaign. ALSO READ: Following the money: Inside FDLR's war economy and the networks that sustained it By defeating the forces of genocide in Rwanda, the RPA had brought Kandt's policy of destroying Watutsi power to an end. This marked the point at which the forces behind FDLR began working to return the genocidal fighters to Rwanda to complete their objective. ALSO READ: When sanctions become strategy: The limits of economic pressure in eastern DR Congo Facilitated by Operation Turquoise and the Kinshasa regime, key figures behind the Rwandan genocide, along with thousands of armed troops, established a stronghold in Mugunga, disguising a military base as a humanitarian refugee camp. President Mobutu Sese Seko, backed by his Western supporters, prepared to use the Mugunga base to return the genocidaires to Rwanda. Anticipating this plan, the RPA supported the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (AFDL) rebels, who destroyed the Mugunga base on November 15, 1996. The destruction of the Mugunga base marked another defeat for the defenders of genocidal ideology. They refused to accept it. On that same day, France requested an urgent meeting in New York to authorize a multinational force of 10,000 to 15,000 troops to respond to the crisis in eastern Zaire. Their real purpose was to support Operation Turquoise. The force was ultimately abandoned and never deployed. In 2008, the Governments of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo agreed to work together to eliminate the FDLR threat. This led to the launch of the Umoja Wetu joint operation in January 2009 by the Rwandan Defence Force (RDF) and the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC). In just a few days, the Rwandan forces dismantled FDLR camps, neutralized more than 150 combatants, and secured the surrender and repatriation of hundreds of fighters and hostages. The operation marked a major diplomatic breakthrough, briefly repairing relations between Kigali and Kinshasa. Its success was possible because the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in DR Congo (MONUC) was deliberately excluded from the planning. Following Umoja Wetu, the Congolese army partnered with UN peacekeepers to launch Operation Kimia, which, instead of eradicating FDLR once and for all, allowed it to survive. The survivors of the Umoja Wetu campaign waited for Tshisekedi's rise to power, a leader whose actions, in my view, revealed his alignment with the Western proxy and his support for FDLR. Do not be deceived. FDLR's survival has been engineered by neocolonial forces to keep the region unstable. This ongoing conflict gives the West a free pass to plunder DR Congo, ensuring that it never becomes a self-sufficient power serving the interests of the Great Lakes region, including Rwanda, rather than those of the West. That is encouraging to hear. However, finding a lasting solution to the FDLR threat remains the central issue. Where will the solution come from? We will save the answer to that question for another day. The writer is a media specialist, historian, and playwright.

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How old anti-Tutsi ideology continues to shield FDLR – Part II