On March 28, the U.N. Security Council approved the creation of a war-making-peacekeeping unit, a "specialized intervention brigade" designed to destroy the vicious rogue militias that plague the Democratic Republic of Congo's chaotic eastern provinces.
You won't find the oxymoron "war-making-peacekeeping" in U.N. Security Council Resolution 2098's published text; the oxymoron's truth is much too blunt for gun-shy diplomats. Careful euphemisms like "neutralize" and "disarm" camouflage the order to rid poor and suffering Congo of paramilitary gangsters. The resolution avoids edgy but much more on-the-ground honest verbs like decimate, destroy and eliminate.
But the word games end and the commitment to openly wage war as an ally of the shaky national government in Kinshasa begins when 2098 authorizes the Intervention Brigade to conduct mobile and versatile "targeted offensive operations ... unilaterally or jointly" with the Congolese Army. Of course, offensive attacks will be conducted "in strict compliance with international law."
Resolution 2098 attempts to blunt criticism by declaring that the Intervention Brigade's Congo war does not set a precedent for any future operations. But this is at best a statement reflecting wish and hope. The "no precedent" Intervention Brigade is a profound precedent.
Two gangs 2098 targets for neutralization are utterly loathsome. Uganda's Lords Resistance Army (LRA) and the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) have raped, murdered and tortured tens of thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands more. War criminal Joseph Kony, of KONY 2012 video infamy, commands the LRA. Extremist Hutus who committed the 1994 Rwandan genocide organized the FDLR. Their "no precedent' destruction is overdue.
The rogue militia that directly led to 2098's creation, the March 23 Movement (M23), has more complicated origins, however. M23 ostensibly sprang from a Congolese Tutsi tribal militia raised to combat the FDLR. The Tutsi force allied with the Rwandan government when it went to war with the Congolese national government in Kinshasa. In 2012, M23 established in North Kivu what 2098 calls "an illegitimate parallel administration." That is diplo-speak for a rebel government.
In some circumstances, it is a step toward political legitimacy.
I doubt M23's legitimacy. U.N. investigators have evidence that it is a proxy for opaque interests in Rwanda and Uganda. In March, M23 split into warring factions. Rwanda and Uganda both back the Intervention Brigade. For now, there is little likelihood that the brigade will help Kinshasa's corrupt and tyrannical government defeat a legitimate eastern Congolese rebel movement. The Congolese government, however, is corrupt and tyrannical. Legitimate rebel movements do and ought to challenge corrupt tyrannies.
Resolution 2098 mentions "deteriorating security" in mineral-rich Katanga province (south Congo). Since the 1960 Katangan rebellion (it spurred the U.N. to deploy its first African peacekeeping mission, U.N. Operation in the Congo), Katanga has been Congo's most volatile region. Belgian colonialists backed that rebellion, which U.N. peacekeepers forcibly ended in late 1962. Katangan rebels invaded the province in 1977 and 1978; international military forces, supporting dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, defeated both invasions.
Resolution 2098 mentions two Katangan militias, suggesting they are brigade targets. The Gedeon militia is led by a mass murderer. But Kata-Katanga militiamen claim they are fighting for regional autonomy. Some Congolese sources assert the two militias are one and the same. Others are less certain. In March, Kata-Katanga raided Katanga's provincial capital. The poorly armed militiamen were unsophisticated but surprisingly courageous. Pro-government military and police units defeated them, quickly.
Then, on April 19, a Kata-Katangan political platform emerged. The group charged the Kinshasa government with stealing mineral royalties from Katangans. And does it ever, by the millions. Kata-Katanga has now tied its raid to a legitimate political issue. Is the rogue a rebel?
U.N. peacekeepers know graft, bribery and nepotism infest the Kinshasa government. It would love to eliminate regional political rivals, and subterfuge by Kinshasa is a certainty. Conceivably, the Intervention Brigade could destroy a crude, politically naive but potentially legitimate rebel faction. Avoiding that mistake requires superb military and political intelligence. U.N. peacekeepers acknowledge accurate intelligence is rare.
The U.N.'s no-precedent Intervention Brigade precedent exists for good reason. The trick will be to keep it from becoming a very bad precedent.
To find out more about Austin Bay, and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2013 CREATORS.COM
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Open Letter to Presidents Barack Obama, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Paul Kagame and Yowerri Museveni; British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel:
Rufari Foundation
Rwanda culture Powerhouse for
Global synergies and Alternative modernities
Mail bag 2995 Kigali, Rwanda
Office of the Deputy Director
USA, China, UK, Russia, Germany, Rwanda and Uganda to jointly check the UN's erratic behavior and recurrent penchant for criminality in the Great Lakes region of Africa:
On behalf of Rufari Foundation, I have the honor to recall to Your Excellencies diligent attention that the UN mission known and referred to as MONUC/MONUSCO, spanning 13 years as of now, has been a bogus force of 20 000 officers and men astutely wreaking havoc in D R Congo and Rwanda. Raping young girls in what very much looks like sex tourism enjoyed by officers and men splashing a lot of cheaply earned money. Which money is international taxpayers' money including Congo's and Rwanda's hard earned foreign exchange: that is one. Two: trading Congolese mineral resources is common practice. Three and worst of all: fabricating and broadcasting terribly abrasive criminal allegations leveled against the Rwandan government.
World leaders and strategists must seriously take note that the glaringly heinous and outrageously criminal fact of the so-called recurrent leaks of UN reports leveling baseless accusations at the Government of Rwanda every now and again, in a crystal-clear bid to antagonize Rwanda and D R Congo, has now become an intolerable mass destruction weapon and political destabilization lever. Now, UN security council Resolution 2098 prescribing UN belligerence into eastern Congo is being implemented! Eastern Congolese populations are for the nth time going to be crushed by a coalition of UN armed forces! Remember attacking the M23 which is already in negotiations with the Kabila government, is a negation of the sole universally approved conflict resolution leverage: the political and diplomatic levers. What is the hidden agenda driving France and the UN to drag the international community into an insensate belligerence in eastern D.R. Congo?
The UN has so often been erratic in its pursuit of its mission to ensure peace and security in the world, causing massive death and desolation across the world in general, in Rwanda and DR Congo in particular. The Carlsson Report published in December 1999 clearly indicated the criminal role the UN played in the staging and the commission of genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Had the UN assumed due responsibility, said genocide would never had had a chance to erupt and wipe off a million Rwandan folks.
It is now high time to have the UN inveterate penchant for complacent criminality checked. The UN has most decidedly become an abiding mortal danger for the peoples of Rwanda and Congo and for global humanity at large. The realm of dangerous absurdity in international laws' execution based on treacherous international politicking, pervasive and complacent criminal negligence alongside the sacrosanct impunity of the UN must end. In 2003, US president G.W. Bush said of the UN that it had become a redundant and irrelevant organization! He could as well have said it was a bogus and criminal organization! President G.W.Bush was addressing the UN general Assembly of Heads of State and Government in New York.
On different occasions, through the last three decades, serious proposals/resolutions (unexecuted to date) were tabled and examined in high political and diplomatic forums, as to overhauling and reshaping the UN structures, extending UN Security Council permanent seats to yet another few countries, Germany, Japan, Nigeria? Egypt? South Africa?, to top up the existing ones so as to balance chances to enhance global peace and security endeavors.
We therefore reckon that we as the peoples of D R Congo and Rwanda organized in government and civil society sectors must one way or another track the sum of wrongdoings (omissions and commissions) of the UNO in the African Great lakes region through decades: ONUC (1960-1961 in D.R. Congo),MINUAR (1994-1995 in Rwanda), MONUC-MONUSCO (1999- … in D. R. Congo), with a due sense of legal scrutiny and political wholesomeness.
This task is clearly a multijurisdictional responsibility. Granted the circumstances of the hour on the international scene, as regards Rwanda and Congo; considering the gravity of the international community's and UNO's unchecked chain of subterranean crimes spanning two decades, which have yet again cropped up to set Rwanda and D R Congo on a war stage or a collision course rather; Congo, Rwanda and Uganda, supported by the USA, China, Russia, the UK, Germany , and other willing partners of the Congolese and Rwandan peoples, ought to put up inter-jurisdictional synergies, including those of seasoned diplomats, security personnel, criminal lawyers and crime investigation police officers.
These and other government synergies shall be supplemented by US, Chinese, Russian, British, German, Ugandan, Rwandan and Congolese civil society organizations' concurring efforts geared towards the same purpose of ensuring the sorting out of atop said matter adversely affecting Rwanda, Congo, Africa and the world at large.
On behalf of Rufari Foundation, I avail this opportunity to anticipate our gratitude to Your Excellencies for your attention and diligence and reiterate the assurance of our highest consideration.
Ntarugera Deo Koya, Cultural & Political affairs analyst
Deputy Director, Rufari Foundation
Kigali
Comment: #1
Posted by: ntarugera deo koya
Thu May 2, 2013 3:25 AM
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