This is the latest story which appeared on the front page of the BBC this morning implicating Rwandan in Congo conflict.  However, BBC is writing what is already known to some of us who follow the politics of the great lakes region and Rwanda in particular. Interestingly this report is from the UN which implicates the Rwandan Government in complicity in both supplying arms and soldiers in the troubled North Kivu of the DRC despite the mapping report which was shelved in UN drawers.

As mentioned above, this report comes after another UN report called Mapping report which was saying the same things, shamelessly the international community is silent and still shaking the hand with the devil. Recently in my article (the untold stories) Amnesty International was warning Rwanda and the international community in general not trade human rights with economic growth.

As usual Mushikiwacu I mean here the Rwandan Foreign Minister was heard on the same Radio (BBC) denying Rwandan involvement and transferring the blame to the failure of the international community to flush out the interahamwe and FDLR who are always considered to be the reason Rwanda involves herself in Congo.

Rwanda’s foreign minister told the BBC the UN report is “categorical lies”.

“The UN mission in DR Congo is lying; they have not verified anything; they are repeating claims and rumours that we, the Rwandan government, have heard over the last many weeks,” Foreign Minister Louise Mushikiwabo told the BBC’s Network Africa programme.

But who lies? The UN officials who interviewed Rwandan Nationals who defected? Or Mushikiwabo who is saving her country from embarrassment and of course saving her own job.

To understand the role of Rwanda in Cong Conflict you do not to have a PhD, since the fall of Kabila the father, the Chief of Staff of the armed forces of Congo at the time is well known, he is the current Minister of Rwandan Defense. Without going through the history and all the details of the conflict of Congo, the death of the Kabila father was a result of a conflict of Kagame and Kabila the father who refused to get orders from Kigali. What happened to the Kabila father is now history.

Kabila the Son, who was picked to replace his father, was more flexible with Kigali administration and that’s why he has managed to survive to this day despite hostilities and Kagame’s continued interference and involvement in Congo conflict which has caused the most human disaster of the 21st Century.

In interview on CNN by Christine Amanpour on 19th Mach 2010, Kagame refuted allegations that his government has something to do with the continuing civil war in mineral-rich Congo, even though he acknowledged that Rwandan troops intervened there a decade ago in an attempt to stop rebel groups from returning to Rwanda. Interestingly she did not tell Christine when his troops came back to Rwanda.

Indeed, for us who know Kagame very well, Rwandan troops have never left Congo; they only change names and guards. Take for instance, The man called Nkundabatware(Nkunda) where is he? Who made him a hero to Kagame and a murderer to many of us. After Nkunda , who crowned Bosco Ntaganda knowing he has committed all the worst crimes against humanity and already indicted by the ICC?

It’s shocking to notice that Kagame did not even try to dismiss the facts but instead blamed it all on Leopold II of Belgium for having done…the same! As Obama said in Oslo: “there must be consequences”, there will be consequences! Mr. President!

Will the consequences come to Kagame in our lifetime?

Few in the West realize that a main force driving this conflict has been largely by Kagame army along with several Congolese groups supported by Rwanda. Some of Kagame’s greatest admirers are Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Starbucks magnate Howard Schultz. American evangelist Rick Warren considers him something of an inspiration and even Bill Gates has invested in what has been called Africa’s success story. Yes, Western liberals, reactionary evangelicals, and capitalist carpetbaggers alike tout Paul Kagame as the herald of a new, self-reliant African prosperity.

Africa’s World War is the most ambitious of several remarkable new books that reexamine the extraordinary tragedy of Congo and Central Africa since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. Along with René Lemarchand’s The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa and Thomas Turner’s The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality, Prunier’sAfrica’s World War explores arguments that have circulated among scholars of sub-Saharan Africa for years. … In all three, the Kagame regime, and its allies in Central Africa, is portrayed not as heroes but rather as opportunists who use moral arguments to advance economic interests. And their supporters in the United States and Western Europe emerge as alternately complicit, gullible, or simply confused. For their part in bringing intractable conflict to a region that had known very little armed violence for nearly thirty years, all the parties—so these books argue—deserve blame, including the United States.

It goes without saying that, as long as the US and the Western Europe especially UK  which is the biggest donor which  injects 50 % in the  Rwandan National budget, Congo’s conflicts will continue to be a problem of the colonial  masters and FDLR and Interhamwe, and Kagame probably will not answer to all these crimes committed against humanity in our lifetime.

Jacqueline Umurungi

Brussels..