Kagame’s Trojan Horse in Kinshasa
Yaa-Lengi Ngemi is the president of the Congo Coalition, which is based in New York.
November 29, 2012
The outside world must come to grips with the fact that Rwandan President Paul Kagame controls an important region of Congo.
Since 1996, the Tutsi-led Rwandan government has pretty much controlled Congo’s eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, mostly by militias financed and trained by the Rwandan Army. "During these 12 years of Rwandan control," wrote Herman Cohen in a 2008 New York Times Op-Ed, "the mineral-rich provinces have been economically integrated into Rwanda.”
According to Colum Lynch of Foreign Policy, the M23 movement was founded by rogue officers from the Congolese army. But a leaked confidential U.N. panel report alleged that the group essentially takes its orders from James Kabarebe, Rwanda's defense minister.
This past July, Stephen Rapp, head of Obama’s war crimes office, warned President Kagame that his support of M23 could land him at the International Criminal Court like Charles Taylor. Why is the United States waiting to act on this threat? Why is the United Nations seemingly helpless?
Here's the problem: Kagame, Congolese President Joseph Kabila and the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, all Tutsis, have been making fools out of the world community by switching leaders in eastern Congo every time the International Criminal Court demands the arrest of war criminals to which they are tied.
Kagame’s lobby in the United States has successfully won support in the U.S. government. Meanwhile I think that Kabila, who is known by diplomats in Kinshasa as "le petit Rwandais,” is Kagame’s trojan horse in Kinshasa.
Since 1996, the Tutsi-led Rwandan government has pretty much controlled Congo’s eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, mostly by militias financed and trained by the Rwandan Army. "During these 12 years of Rwandan control," wrote Herman Cohen in a 2008 New York Times Op-Ed, "the mineral-rich provinces have been economically integrated into Rwanda.”
According to Colum Lynch of Foreign Policy, the M23 movement was founded by rogue officers from the Congolese army. But a leaked confidential U.N. panel report alleged that the group essentially takes its orders from James Kabarebe, Rwanda's defense minister.
This past July, Stephen Rapp, head of Obama’s war crimes office, warned President Kagame that his support of M23 could land him at the International Criminal Court like Charles Taylor. Why is the United States waiting to act on this threat? Why is the United Nations seemingly helpless?
Here's the problem: Kagame, Congolese President Joseph Kabila and the Ugandan president, Yoweri Museveni, all Tutsis, have been making fools out of the world community by switching leaders in eastern Congo every time the International Criminal Court demands the arrest of war criminals to which they are tied.
Kagame’s lobby in the United States has successfully won support in the U.S. government. Meanwhile I think that Kabila, who is known by diplomats in Kinshasa as "le petit Rwandais,” is Kagame’s trojan horse in Kinshasa.
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