Ntaganda’s surrender vindicates Rwanda

The surrender of General Bosco Ntaganda to the US Embassy in Kigali might have caught many by surprise, but at least it further exposes the unfounded allegations that Rwanda has a hand in DRC’s recurrent woes.The former officer of the DRC army is a subject of an indictment by the International Criminal Court for suspected war crimes, and until last year, was still a relevant cog in the Congolese wheel.When the latest uprising by the M23 rebel group broke out, some sections of the international community, and the DRC government in particular, were quick to drag Rwanda into the fray, claiming that it was backing the rebels, which Rwanda denied vehemently.Despite M23’s denials that Ntaganda was not part of their game plan and nor was Rwanda and Uganda backing them, the so-called regional experts turned a deaf ear and sought to influence international opinion.The truth finally began to come out when Ntaganda and M23 clashed, leading to the defeat of troops allied to the former.The question that all those who have made it an art of seeing Rwanda’s shadow in every corner of the DRC problems is this: Why did Ntaganda not turn to his supposed ‘Godfather’, Rwanda, for protection, instead of requesting to be turned over to the ICC? After all, Rwanda is not a signatory of the Rome Statute, it would have just taken him out of the picture as was the case with Laurent Nkunda.But as history tends to repeat itself, removing one element of the DRC problem will not yield any lasting solution without treating the root cause.

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Ntaganda’s surrender vindicates Rwanda