Who is behind Eastern DRC’s turmoil ?

Editor,This is with reference to Joseph Rwagatare’s article, “Peace in the DRC still distant”, published in The New Times edition of August 6.Don’t be misled, the UN isn’t pulling in different directions; they are playing the Bad Cop-Good Cop routine. It is the UN Security Council, with France at the helm that did everything possible to ensure an ICGLR-mediated peaceful solution to the latest eruption in DRC fighting wouldn’t be possible.Not one arm of Ban Ki-moon’s UN resisted this successful shunting aside of the region in its efforts to promote local solutions to local problems. Herve Ladsous’ DPKO shop may be at the forefront of pushing for further militarisation of UN “peacekeeping” in Eastern DRC - an oxymoronic reading of peacekeeping if ever there was one - but the UN as a whole is reading from the same score co-written by the likes of Human Rights Watch.Given the fact that everything the UN has been doing in the DRC since Monuc-Monusco was put in place seems deliberately intended to aggravate rather than help find a solution to the country’s fundamental governance problem, we are forced to conclude peace is not and has never been the goal.Who benefits from this perpetual bed of conflict? Certainly not the Congolese general population or the neighbouring countries for which a lawless DRC is a fundamental security threat and an opportunity cost for mutual trade and development. But there are definitely big beneficiaries, otherwise so much treasure and effort would not be sunk into keeping the country under continued tutelage.If you identify those who are at the driving wheel of Monusco and the heavy presence of Monusco and its large auxiliaries from the international humanitarian enterprises with powerful lobbies in various Western capitals, you begin to get an idea of who is pushing the current agenda to DRC trepidation.But the Congolese who have also accepted to be played for suckers are responsible for the mess. Until they fully own the process of returning peace to their benighted lands, all the efforts of the region to help bring peace, security, stability and the necessary foundations of a functioning state will be for naught, especially when neighbours have to labour against the heavy headwinds of occult international interests bent on keeping the DRC exactly where it is supine and for the profitable resource-stripping.Mwene Kalinda, Kigali************************This is a problem that will never end as long as Rwanda is pulling to the Anglophone side. France will fight to the bitter end to stop Rwanda from spreading Anglophonic (East African Community, Commonwealth) to Burundi and then to Congo and may be far beyond.France cannot easily give up its empires of influence. So be blessed for a never ending war between France and English-speaking Rwanda. The war will end in the region only if Rwanda turns back to Francophonie and I do not see that happening any time soon.France is afraid of Rwanda’s influence in Kivu region because the Tutsi community there and would prefer a change in Rwanda, and if not possible, drive out the Congolese Tutsi out of Congo to Rwanda.Tim Mugisha, Kigali, Rwanda

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Who is behind Eastern DRC’s turmoil ?