Two Damning Reports on the DRC: The Dance with Death & The mystery of the elusive Congolese wolfram

(PHOTO: "Women fleeing to Goma, 2008"; Photo by Walter Astrada; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas)

***

Among the bevy of damning reports and statistics on Africa that came out this week, two reports released by the London-based NGOs Save the Children and Global Witness were particularly devastating for the DRC.

The first report is the annual report Save the Children has been issuing on Mother's Day for the past 14 years.

This year, it's titled "Surviving the First Day: State of the World's Mothers 2013." Its foreword is written by Melinda Gates, "Co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation."

The title of one chapter of the report reads like the title of a gory Hollywood B-movie: "The most dangerous places to be born," while the appendix gives the "14th Annual Mothers' Index & Country Ranking." 

And its opening lines are stuff redolent of horror yarns (to be delivered in a voice-over in the dramatic barytone of a James Earl Jones):

"The birth of a child should be a time of wonder and celebration. But for millions of mothers and babies in developing countries, it is a dance with death."

(http://www.savethechildrenweb.org/SOWM-2013/files/mobile/mobile.html#1)

The beat of this dance with death is especially syncopated in the DRC, says the Report, which, at rank 176, is at the very bottom of the world's Country Ranking.

The last 10 countries in those deadly purlieus include, in worsening order, Côte d'Ivoire, Chad, Nigeria, Gambia, Central African Republic, Niger, Mali, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and the DRC!

How the hell does the DRC, once again, in international ranking systems, find itself in this sordid neighborhood? 

This is the very question Save the Children tackles in its annual report:

"Why is Democratic Republic of the Congo last?

"In DR Congo, levels of maternal mortality, child mortality, educational status, poverty and women's participation in parliament are among the very worst in the world. Unlike most other countries in the bottom 10 which perform substantially 'better' on at least one indicator, the DR Congo performs poorly (i.e. in the bottom 12 percent of countries) across all indicators. This consistently poor performance on all five indicators causes DRC to rank last."

I went through this report in its French version with two female academics at Kinshasa University. They were firstly incensed by what they called the "Western mania of serial ranking systems." 

They then singled out two criteria in the ranking system of the Report--"women's participation in parliament" and "educational status"--to dismiss it as yet another installment in Congo-bashing.

"Does Save the Children seriously think that there are more Somali women in parliament than Congolese women?" those women fumed. "And the notion that Somali women are more educated than Congolese women is simply laughable!"

Be that as it might, for these educated Kinoises, the only truth contained in that Report is what Melinda Gates says about Rwanda and a few other overachieving countries in her foreword:

"In many individual countries, progress has been even more dramatic. Barely a decade ago, in 1999, 1 in 5 Rwandan children died before turning 5. In 2011, the  child mortality rate in Rwanda had fallen to 1 in 20. Other law income countries, such as Malawi, Bangladesh and Nepal have also made significant progress against enormous odds. It is now possible that all four countries will meet the 2015 United Nations' Millennium Development Goal (MDG 4) of reducing child deaths by two-thirds since 1990."

This kind of achievement realized by Rwanda doesn't particularly impress Congolese who point to the ongoing Rwandan project of destabilization of the DRC aimed at facilitating the systematic and massive looting of Congo's resources. 

The argument goes on along these lines: These resources stolen from the Congo are then used and invested in Rwanda to obtain the kind of achievements praised by Melinda Gates. If only the Western sponsors of Rwanda would leave the DRC alone, the latter would readily achieve the same kind of impressive feats!

***

The second report to come out this week seems to give ammunition to this line of argument.

The briefing report was released on May 7 by Global Witness and is entitled "Putting principles into practice: Risks and opportunities for conflict-free sourcing in eastern Congo."

(http://www.globalwitness.org/library/new-investigation-global-witness-reveals-high-level-military-involvement-eastern-congos-gold)

The report charges that Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda continue to siphon resources out of Congo with impunity. 

The new system set in place to cheat on the transparency mechanisms of Dodd-Frank is quite sophisticated. The commonly used techniques consists in basically laundering minerals stolen from the Congo in broad daylight, so to speak.

Burundi is the traffic hub for Congo's stolen gold before its shipment to Rwanda, Dubai or other Asian markets.

Besides, the extraction and trade of gold and other minerals remain highly militarized in the Congo--with FARDC senior officers and militia groups either directly engaged in mining operations or imposing hefty taxes on artisanal miners; thus preventing local communities from benefiting from mining activities.

Impunity is so rampant that the infamous Gen. Gabriel Amisi aka Tango-Four is still playing a major role in the illegal mining trade:

"Despite being suspended from the army in November 2012 for supplying arms to rebel groups, including the Raia Mutomboki, General Amisi has continued to profit from the gold produced at Omate [South Kivu]."

This is just a small illustration of the way Congolese officials are now colluding with foreign interest groups to plunder their own country.

A vast scale pillage in the extractive sector in the DRC has just been showcased in the 2013 African Progress Report unveiled by the African Progress Panel at the World Economic Forum being held in Cape Town.

According to a Mail & Guardian, the Panel "analysed five privatisation deals involving the sale of [DRC] state-owned assets to foreign investors operating through offshore companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and other jurisdictions. 

"The panel estimated that the losses sustained in these deals, through the under valuation of assets, was $1.3-billion – more than double the DRC's health and education budget. 

"This was in a country with the sixth highest child mortality rate, endemic malnutrition and seven-million children, out of a total of 11.2-million, not attending school."

(http://mg.co.za/article/2013-05-10-report-corruption-weak-governance-costing-africa-billions)

The Global Witness briefing establishes that neighboring countries are also busy--if not busier--bleeding Congo dry.

The most astounding case is the one involving the wolfram extracted in the Congo but tagged and traded by Rwanda, a case featured in one of the boxes of the briefing:

"Where does all the wolfram go?

"There are no registered wolfram exporters in Bukavu and there have been no official wolfram exports from South Kivu province since 2010. However provincial mining authority reports seen by Global Witness show that wolfram is mined at Lunkutu (Walungu), Bitale (Kalehe), Minembwe (Fizi) and on the island of Idjwi. [...]

"Global Witness received three independent accounts from regional mineral traders describing how Congolese wolfram is smuggled into Burundi and from there transits through Rwanda for export."

The mystery of the elusive Congolese wolfram shows how Rwanda flouts the new system of tagging and transparency that purports to stem the flow of blood minerals from the Congo.

What's more, it also provides circumstantial motives as to why Rwanda is fueling military conflict in eastern through its armed proxies, including the M23.

***

PHOTO CREDITS: Via artblart.com

M23 opts for shoot-to-kill policy for its deserters

PHOTO 1: "A joint team (Malawi, Tanzania and South Africa) arrives in Goma on a reconnaissance mission ahead of the deployment of the Intervention Brigade in eastern DRC, 12 March 2013. Photo by Sylvain Liechti." (MONUSCO photo legend)

PHOTO 2: Rwandan propaganda claims that these guys killing time at Ngoma Interment Camp in Eastern Province, Rwanda, are among the 689 defeated fighters of the pro-Bosco Ntaganda M23 faction.

***

No one in the DRC is fooled any longer by the bombastic communiqués being fired urbi et orbi by the M23, including the most recent one, appointing two new so-called administrators for the territories of Nyiragongo and Rutshuru.

Everyone here knows that bad, deleterious morale is tearing the bandit outfit asunder.

Radio Okapi reports for instance that in this past month of April alone, 87 M23 fighters had surrendered to MONUSCO forces.

The short term outlook for M23 was so dire with this personnel depletion that it has just set up an ambush point about 30 meters from the entrance of a MONUSCO base at Kiwanja for the purpose of shooting to kill its deserters!

This situation is a far cry from what prevailed on the ground just two months ago.

Then, leaders of the M23 outfit of doppengänger anticitizens were sending threatening letters to parliaments in South Africa, Malawi, and Tanzania.

In those missives riddled with egregious grammatical errors and typos, these cross-border criminals were telling lawmakers of those countries to pressure their respective governments to renege on their pledge to contribute troops to the MONUSCO Intervention Brigade... or else!

That was then, when these modern-day highwaymen were still basking under the fresh  reinforcements of their ranks by Rwandan combatants and troops from the defeated splinter pro-Bosco Ntaganda M23 group who'd apparently been sent back by Rwanda to northeastern DRC.

By the way, Rwanda still dismisses as "rumors" reports alleging that Rwandan insurgency micromanagers sent back into the Congo fighters of the defeated wing of M23.

And to dispel those rumors, the Rwandan Minister of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs, Séraphine Mukantabana, has now picked the habit of taking diplomats accredited to Kigali on sightseeing tours of Ngoma Interment Camp in Eastern Province, Rwanda, where those alleged M23 erstwhile fighters are supposed to be sheltered.

Minister Mukantabana is even swearing these days that those defeated M23 fighters have all but given up on their razzias into the DRC by producing one exemplar of the "oath" these bandits are supposed to have "freely" written.

The exemplar being shown around is the one written by one of the M23 lead criminals, which reads:

"I, Jean-Marie Rugerero Runiga, hereby willingly genuinely and permanently renounce all political activities that can be associated to armed groups."

Sick humor no doubt as the "oath" is about renouncing "political activities"; not military activities--though some M23 ex-fighters present at Ngoma Interment Camp include some of the most vicious M23 military chiefs of the ilk of renegade Brig. Gen. Baudouin Ngaruye and Col. Innocent Zimurinda.

And just as recently Rwanda was seeking that the DRC grants citizenship to all Rwandan refugees who are on Congolese soil, Minister Mukantabana now wants the UNHCR to "expedite" the "status change" from armed insurgents to refugees for those international bandits.

Now, the Rwandan desperate strategy is to clamor that the crisis in eastern DRC can't be resolved militarily. 

Which means that M23 renegades have to be reintegrated into the FARDC and be given the military command of the North-Kivu Province.

When M23 and their Rwandan sponsors still seemed to have fallen prey to their own propaganda of invulnerability and of MONUSCO's supposed military incompetence and alleged duplicity with Rwandan FDLR terrorists, they were MONUSCO-bashing all over the place.

Now the narrative is somewhat muddled, though you still encounter now and then that MONUSCO-bashing vein.

For instance, as recently as April 30, the Kigali-based daily New Times was recycling this MONUSCO-bashing narrative in an article penned by Edwin Musoni announcing the visit to Rwanda of former Irish president Mary Robinson, newly appointed UN Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa.

Musoni's article reads in part:

"Currently, the UN Mission in DR Congo maintains close to 20,000 peacekeepers but they have been accused of maintaining a friendly relationship with top commanders of genocidal group, the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda [.]"

(Source: http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?a=66433&i=15343)

Now that MONUSCO Intervention brigage is set to be deployed, Rwandan diehard warmongers need to be told by the DRC government and the international community in no uncertain terms that they should stay within the confines of Rwanda.

On the other hand, peddlers of death of the likes of M23 bandits have shown enough to the world that they don't care a whit about Congo and Congolese citizens. 

Therefore, doppelgänger anticitizens of the likes of Runiga should be instead seeking Rwandan citizenship instead of a change of status to Refugees from the DRC.

***

PHOTO CREDITS: PHOTO 1: monusco.unmissions.org; PHOTO 2: newtimes.co.rw

Dr. Cécile Kyenge Kashetu, first black Italian cabinet minister, is Congolese-born

(PHOTO: Dr. Cécile Kyenge Kashetu, 49, new Italian minister for Integration)

***

Enrico Letta, the new Italian leftist prime minister, has just
appointed the first ever black cabinet minister in Italian history.

The new minister was until her appointment an MP of the leftist
Democratic Party (PD), Cécile Kyenge Kashetu, who has to manage the
contentious portfolio of Integration, a newfangled political-correct
ministry.

And she happens to be a Congolese-born eye surgeon who emigrated to
Italy in her late teens, and later on became a naturalized Italian
citizen.

Dr. Kyenge is married and the mother of two daughters--Maïsha and Giulia.

Dr. Kyenge was born in the now restive mining city of Kambove in
Katanga Province. Just this past February, violent clashes pitted the
Congolese police against artisanal miners who were being evacuated
from a makeshift mining site outside Kambove.

According to a contemporaneous report by Radio Okapi, those clashes on
February 19 obtained a deadly toll:

"[F]ive injured people including three wounded by live bullets, ten
arrests, and property belonging to Gecamines and the Congolese state
ransacked or burned."

Anyway, right now Kambove may be murky and blurry in the mind of
Integration Minister Kyenge, for she has a lot on her plate.

To be true, as the Guardian reported, the Ghanaian-Italian AC Milan
striker Mario Balotelli hailed Kyenge's appointment as "a further, big
step towards a more civilised and responsible Italian society."

But, still according to the Guardian, as her agenda aims at "changing
Italy's citizenship laws, which are based on descent rather than place
of birth," she quickly drew massive flak from the rightwing Northern
League.

Matteo Salvini, one of the leaders of the League, blasted Kyenge's
appointment as "the symbol of a hypocritical, do-gooding left that
would like to abolish the crime of illegal immigration and only thinks
about immigrants' rights and not their duties."

(Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/28/italy-first-black-minister-attacked)


***
PHOTO CREDITS: Via dazebaonews.it

Earl W. Gast, USAID Deputy Administrator for Africa, talks governance with representatives of DRC civil society

(PHOTO: CLOCKWISE: Lea Ndombasi, youth organizer; Yangu Kiakwama,
opposition political activist; an unidentified civil society actor;
me; USAID/DRC Acting Mission Director Catherine Andang; USAID/DRC
Mission Director Diana Putman; USAID Deputy Administrator for Africa
Earl W. Gast; Chief of staff of USAID Africa Bureau Sean Maloney; and
Angèle Makombo-Eboum, opposition leader)

***

For his first visit to Kinshasa, Earl W. Gast, USAID Deputy
Administrator for Africa, found time in the early afternoon of
Wednesday, April 10, to talk with a select group of representatives of
civil society—as well as a high-profile politician—of the Democratic
Republic of Congo about a rare commodity in this country: governance.

Gast was flanked by his own chief of staff, Sean Maloney; USAID/DRC
Mission Director Diana Putman; Acting USAID/DRC Mission Director
Catherine Andang; USAID/DRC Democracy and Governance Officer Theodore
"Ted" Glenn; and two unidentified USAID/DRC staff members, who sat in
the background.

The high-profile Congolese politician I just alluded to was Ms. Angèle
N. Makombo-Eboum, chair of the tiny political party called "Ligue des
Congolais Démocrates" (LIDEC).

In my view, at a roundtable where "governance" is the theme, a good
governance of one's own narrative has to be the leitmotif too.

By introducing herself as one of the presidential candidates in the
November 2011 election when in fact she wasn't on the official roster
of the National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI), Makombo
failed miserably the test of what I'd call the "narrative's good
governance." At the end of the meeting, she gave me her business card
that read in parts: "Candidate at the presidential election of 2011 in
the DRC."

I don't understand why a leader of such national stature need to be
peddling such unnecessary untruths. No wonder then that Congolese
politicians have lost all political credit and are being looked down
with utter contempt by Residents of the Republic.

Well, two high-profile Americans in the room didn't need to brag about
their achievements. Gast has been all over the map as a USAID
official—from Kosovo, Colombia, Iraq, to Afghanistan.

Putman, described as a "Foreign Service Whistleblower," was honored in
2010 by the Foreign Service Association with the William R. Rivkin
award for dissent for challenging "the entire structure of AFRICOM,
[….] when she called them out on the way they were dealing with sexual
and gender-based violence victims."

(See: http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2010/06/25/foreign-service-whistle-blower-gets-an-award)

In any event, Makombo's litany of the alleged electoral malfeasance of
CENI in the 2011 general elections was craftily used by USAID
panelists to segue into more substantial points—such as the following
ones:

1) The decentralization (or devolution) conundrum: Provincial
"decoupage" (carving out) vs. revenues. A bone of contention between
the central government and provincial entities--many among whom are
not even being financially and fiscally viable to begin with—is the
retrocession of 40% of revenues from the central government to
provinces. With additional provinces to be carved out (the country
will have 26 provinces), how this problem will be solved is anybody's
guess.

2) Politicians and civil society groups seem to be facing a tough
choice: Reform CENI first then go to local elections; or instead go to
local elections first then reform CENI afterwards. The law reforming
CENI, though voted in Parliament, has still to be promulgated by
President Joseph Kabila. According to civil society members present,
the law is stuck over the objections from Catholic bishops who want to
see more members of civil society in the revamped CENI.

3) Self-criticism by civil society groups: their strengths and
weaknesses. There seem to be tough challenges in building a strong
network and coalition of civil society groups. There are "pocket NGOs"
and a proliferation of NGOs (more than 9,000 and still growing)
stampeding for dwindling funds from Western donors.

One civil society heavyweight present, Baudouin Hamuli, wanted to see
more resources go into training election experts.

Hamuli also claimed that Congolese civil society is alive and vibrant
despite its contradictions. According to him, civil society groups
have in fact wrested a vital space from the powers that be after 20
years of activism. He added that journalists' rights, especially the
freedom of expression, have dramatically been advanced by civil
society groups that include churches and women's organizations. He
acknowledged however that the coalition that would cement these groups
has to be strengthened.

***
PHOTO CREDITS: Courtesy USAID/DRC

Rwanda is reinforcing M23 for final assault on Goma

(PHOTO: Jules Hakizimwami, right, Speaker of the North-Kivu Provincial
Assembly, with Governor Julien Paluku)

***

Jules Hakizimwami, Speaker of the North-Kivu Provincial Assembly, held
a press briefing in Goma on Thursday, April 4, in which he was
hysterically denouncing Rwanda for sending personnel reinforcement to
M23 positions over the course of these last three days.

Strangely, as was noted by the Radio Okapi report on Hakizimwami's
press briefing, the timeline of the alleged M23 personnel infiltration
back into DRC territory overlaps with the announcement of the
relocation deeper inside Rwanda of 689 pro-Jean-Marie Runiga's M23
refugees made by Rwandan Minister of Disaster Management and Refugee
Affairs, Seraphine Mukantabana.

(See: http://alexengwete.blogspot.com/2013/04/m23-chief-bertrand-bisimwa-apocalypse.html?m=1)

Said Hakizimwami:

"The same troops that had gone into Rwanda are now being brought back
stealthily to reinforce those who are in Rutshuru. Very concordant
informations point to a concentration of men and weapons along the
Rumangabo-Kibumba corridor, precisely to assault the city of Goma."

(Source: http://radiookapi.net/actualite/2013/04/05/nord-kivu-le-president-de-lassemblee-provinciale-denonce-le-renforcement-des-troupes-du-m23/)

According to observers who've elaborated on the basis of Hakizimwami's
initial analysis, Rwanda--and Uganda, incidentally--wants M23 to
reoccupy Goma--and eventually attack Bukavu--ahead of the deployment
of MONUSCO's Intervention Brigade so as: (1) to preempt this
intervention by rendering the costs of its collateral damage
prohibitive in urban settings; and (2) to force the DRC government to
heed M23 "claims" (Hakizimwami).

Those who'd think Hakizimwami is somewhat paranoid ought to re-read my
post on "rules of accommodation (Congo) vs. Negotiating for side
effects (Rwanda)" (See:
http://alexengwete.blogspot.com/2012/06/rules-of-accommodation-congo-vs.html?m=1)

***

PHOTO CREDITS: Via provincenordkivu.org

A specimen of the new breed of Ugly Americans: Howard G. Buffet

(PHOTO 1: Howard G. Buffet, billionaire philanthropist and
self-appointed stakeholder in the African Great Lakes Region)

(PHOTO 2: Erstwhile CIA operative and US State Department official
Hank Crumpton, CEO of the Crumpton Group and pen-for-hire of Howard G.
Buffet)

***

Writing yesterday in the Kigali-based daily New Times, reporter
Eugene Kwibuka celebrated--no doubt as a vindication of the Rwandan
government unconvincing denial of its involvement in setting up and
micromanaging the M23 bandits--the polished hogwash, written by
lobbyists on behalf of billionaire Howard G. Buffet and his
foundation, that purports to give a more informed view on the crisis
in eastern DRC than the one given last year by the UN Group of
Experts.

(Source: http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?i=15316&a=65567)

The ridiculously laudatory piece by Kwibuka fails to point out that
this publication by the Howard G. Buffet Foundation (HGBF)--aptly
released on April's Fool Day--is a self-cannibalizing set of
plagiarisms lifted from a piece co-authored by Buffet and Tony Blair
titled "Stand with Rwanda: Now is no time to cut aid to Kigali"
published on Foreign Policy on February 21, 2013.

(I ranted on that nonsense here in a post of early March:
http://alexengwete.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-callous-buckraker-called-tony-blair.html?m=1)

Well, what else can one expect from a paper that has abandoned all
semblance of decent journalism to become the mouthpiece of the
repressive Kagame regime.

A more balanced assessment of the new dossier penned by Buffet's
mercenaries can be found on the blog ethuin.wordpress.com (With Eyes
Wide Open) in a post titled "Putting things in perspective: Buffet
Foundation versus UN Group of Experts"
(http://ethuin.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/putting-things-in-perspective-buffet-foundation-versus-un-group-of-experts/)

I won't be parsing the paid pro-Kagame informercial produced by Buffet
here, but I am rather marking it down as a benchmark: the dawn of a
new breed of Ugly Americans in the guise of roving global
self-appointed stakeholders.

These self-appointed stakeholders are even worse than the breed of the
new Africa scholars whose ambition, as I surmised in a post of June
2012, "is to make the traditional genre of Africa reporting extinct
and to replace it with something that is a cross between academic
hogwash and advocacy."

(See: http://alexengwete.blogspot.ca/2012/06/laura-seays-view-from-goma-in-warscapes.html?m=1)

What makes Buffet and his ilk dangerous is, firstly, the tons of
monies they're waddling in. Secondly, some of them, such as Tony
Blair, have been top political leaders who currently enjoy instant
access to the world top influential people and decision-makers. And,
lastly, as this most recent endeavor of Buffet has shown, they are
well connected to former spooks turned contractors running their own
intel outfits.

What's more, unlike "unselfish" advocacy groups such as the
International Crisis Group (ICG) or Human Rights Watch (HRW) that
often offer paths to lasting solutions in conflict situations or
advocate on behalf of individual citizens or civil society groups
often oppressed by the powers that be, these new "Ugly Americans"
brazenly advocate on behalf of repressive regimes and oppressive
leaders such as Kagame.

These new Western moneyed self-appointed global stakeholders have now
come to shore on the African continent to stake out their claims and
carve out cartographies of interventions--no matter how idiotic or
terrible they might be.

They're now busy attempting to change, orient, and trim the future of
the African continent to fit and suit their narrow interests while at
the same time driving out, evacuating, dispossessing, disempowering,
and disenfranchising legitimate local, indigenous stakeholders.

In sum, these self-appointed stakeholders--mostly American
unfortunately--are bad news for Africa. Therefore Buffet, being one of
them, is very bad news for Africa in general, and for the African
Great Lakes Region in particular. And I don't care how much money
Buffet is funneling to the good causes at the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation or the WWF.

No one knows what made Buffet appoint himself a stakeholder in and a
savior of the African Great Lakes Region.

But this past December, Buffet baffled Congolese and others in the
region when he "boosted" the Kampala M23-DRC government with a
whopping $500,000 donation!

Why would Buffet invest so much money in "boosting" a group so
universally hated by the Congolese?

You only get an answer to such questions circumstantially--by turning
for instance to one of the two hired guns Buffet enlisted to patch up
an incoherent attack against the UN Group of Experts laced with an
embarrassing panegyric of Kagame and a blasting attack against the
government of the DRC for its malgovernance.

I'm alluding here to the Crumpton Group, headed by erstwhile CIA
spymaster and US State Department official Henry "Hank" Crumpton.

In an interview last May with CNN Suzanne Kelly at the launch of his
memoir "The Art of Intelligence," Crumpton said:

"If you look at the role of non-state actors overall both as
adversaries as enemies, as allies as potential allies, as citizens,
and institutions that we need to protect, I think that they are
increasingly a part of the landscape."

(Source: http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/05/15/former-spys-memoir-gives-voice-to-the-frustration-that-comes-with-the-territory/)

Crumpton-qua-Buffet may therefore see M23 as part of eastern DRC
"landscape" for years to come and as actors to partner with in the
future balkanized Congo!

As I said before, in the ideal world of social and cartographic
engineering designs of these new self-appointed roving stakeholders,
local peoples and their imaginings don't exist. This ideal world has
no bearing whatsoever on the reality of Africa, having been hatched in
air-conditioned offices in Seattle, Washington, or in Arlington,
Virginia.

Postcolonial Africa has yet to start planning on ways of countering
the imperial forays of these colonists of the 21st century.

***

PHOTO CREDITS: PHOTO 1: Via farmfutures.com; PHOTO 2: Via cnn.com

M23 chief Bertrand Bisimwa: Apocalypse Now

(PHOTO: Bertrand Bisimwa at a press briefing at Bunagana yesterday)

***

With the full deployment by the end of this month of the MONUSCO
Intervention Brigade, M23 political head Bertrand Bisimwa may most
definitely have started feeling the ground opening up under him and
his posse of international bandits.

In his reaction to the UN Security Council resolution 2098 (2013)
setting up an "Intervention Brigade" to go after M23 and other armed
groups, Bisimwa, who's recently taken on the habit of donning a stupid
oversized cow-boy felt hat à la Yoweri Museveni, said yesterday at a
press briefing at Bunagana that "from now on, peacekeeping forces will
wage war on groups of citizens who are demanding good governance in
our country."

Really, Bisimwa!

Could you show the world the petition signed by groups of Congolese
residents of the Republic asking you and your gangsters to kill,
plunder, and rape on their behalf for good governance?

Is Bisimwa waging war for "Groups of Citizens" or is he an element of
the hordes of "doppelgänger anticitizens" terrorizing peaceful
Congolese civilians?

(I systematically use on this blog the expression "doppelgänger
anticitizens"--coined by Comaroff and Comaroff in another context--to
tag individuals or groups evincing various kinds of uncivic
behaviors.)

Significantly, Bismwa added: "It [the UN military offensive campaign]
will be the Apocalypse!"

Apocalypse now, indeed, for Bisimwa, his bandits and his
sponsors--Rwanda and Uganda--as their loots in the Congo would dry up
overnight!

Congolese therefore can't wait to see the advent of this
Apocalypse--in the real or figurative sense--of Bisimwa and his M23
looters, rapists and mass murderers. In fact, most Congolese denizens
often even fantasize about real Apocalypse being visited upon Rwanda
and Uganda!

Well, it's never too late: Bisimwa and his fellow could still avoid
the Apocalypse by laying down their weapons and disbanding--with
individual members reporting to the nearest police precinct to detail
the mischiefs and atrocities they might committed upon Congolese
civilians. For this time around, civil society groups of the Kivus
have vowed to see to it that not one single abuser of human rights
would go unpunished!

Maybe Bisimwa and his international bandits didn't realize there was a
rising tsunami of outrage worldwide over military entrepreneurship of
cross-border resource pillages masquerading as homegrown legitimate
demands over governance--the very kind Rwanda and Uganda have been
repeatedly engaged in on the territory of the DRC, claiming staggering
human tolls and devastating humanitarian disasters.

Talking of humanitarian disasters, it now turns out that Rwanda is
having a tidbit of taste of the bitter medicine it had been
administering to the Congo over the years.

Rwanda Minister of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs Seraphine
Mukantabana, who was describing yesterday to the Kigali daily "New
Times" the relocation of 689 M23 bandits (of the Jean-Marie Runiga's
faction) from the border district of Rubavu to Ngoma, also complained
about the lack of international assistance in this mini-refugee
crisis.

Said Mukantabana:

"The international community has ignored and adamantly decided not to
support us in managing this crisis. These are not our citizens,
neither are they our prisoners, they belong to the UN."

Adding:

"It is now upon the UN to provide other requirements for the refugees."

(Source: http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?i=15315&a=65551)

This would sound like a cruel joke to the more than 800,000 Congolese
IDPs who've left their homes and livelihoods thanks to Rwandan-backed
M23 cross-border terror group.

And, if anything, this episode should serve as a cautionary tale to
Rwanda who's wont to cause mayhem, deaths, and mass displacement of
populations in the Congo.

***
PHOTO CREDITS: Via kigalitoday.com