Behind The Presidential Curtains: A Summon to my good old Comrades

The M23 is predominantly a Tutsi rebels group made up of the Rwanda-backed National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).

(SALEM) - With the on-going continued cut of President Kagame’s Foreign aid by his long time Western sponsors for the last week or so due to his continued cruelty to our Congolese brethren I feel compelled to speak on this subject.

Kagame has done this by directly supporting the M23 rebel group which is on the brink of capturing the city of Goma among others in the Kivu Province of the DRC and with a plan of creating a new Republic of Kivu autonomous from the great Congo. Unfortunately this manuver disregards the suffering of innocent women and children involved in this saga.

This has kept me awake for days thinking about the inhumane acts of our President, His Excellence Paul Kagame, who is a product of civil unrest himself. Kagame, like my old brothers, sought safety in Uganda as a child refugee due to the unrest in Rwanda in the 1950/60s.

He was only 3year old when his mother carried him on her back carrying her belongings on her head and moved to Uganda for protection. President Kagame grew to become a Major in a foreign army. For sure, a person with such a recurring history should not fuel it in any part of the world let alone his neighbouring Congo no matter what the price or gain.

As I write this curtain I have received information from anonymous veterans which indicates that the M23 rebels backed by the RDF continue to advance to the city of Goma. This information makes me wonder if the cuts in foreign aid would have any impact on Kagame’s plans or else stop his intentions.

Of course, the impacts of these cuts still lie in Kagame’s investments but not on normal citizens in the village who earns nothing and struggle each day to feed their family. It stays the same because when you have nothing then you have nothing to lose. With President Kagame on the other hand, so long as the M23 continues to advance, capture towns and mineral rich mines, he will continue to benefit from DRC resources and thus compensate for the loss Western aid.

It so embarrassing for a sovereign country like the DRC with such resources and a so-called government to ignore its citizens and let them die in cross fires and under foreign invaders like the Rwanda Defence Forces and the M23. President Joseph Kabila has came out and stated that the presence of Rwandan military forces in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo is “an open secret.”

To some of us this statement is troubling on its own, we are left to wonder why a president of the Republic of Congo waited for all this time when people are dying on a daily basis when he knew very well that he was put in power by the same man for the same interest that he is looking for from the M23!

His excellence, Paul Kagame, is the man to answer for the death of Laurent Desire Kabila who is the father of the young Joseph Kabila, the current President of the DRC. President Kabila knows what it means to follow up on his father’s death but he chooses to ignore this fact and keep it in his own archives. How can we expect such a President to question the death of a normal citizen let alone his own father?

President Kabila’s DRC is 905,355 sq. miles (2,344,858 km²) the population of 73,599,190 million; but cannot even maintain its own security despite of all the resources it possesses.

In a rare public press conference last Saturday, President Kabila said that he had also questioned Uganda over its alleged support for the rebel M23 movement operating in the region, yet, Kampala has denied any involvement.

Was it urgent to investigate Uganda, even though it was not mentioned in the United Nations Group of Experts report? However, this was the same man who was shaking hands with the devil Paul Kagame last week with move to make what they called a joint force to wipe out the insurgents in region. President Kabila knew very well that His excellence Paul Kagame is the master-mind of all that has been going on since 1995 in the then Zaire and now DRC. It is “an open secret” that Kabila knows very well what happened to all his predecessors.

He is the president of a country that owns the mineral resources that the whole world wants a piece of, not just Kagame. For over a decade Kagame has recruited and created rebels after rebels including Joseph Kabila himself together with his fallen father just to be able to rule the eastern region of Congo and gain control of any mineral he could get his hands on.

UN officials in the DRC say the M23 rebels are well-armed.
Photo: aljazeera.com

"As for Rwanda's presence, that is an open secret," Kabila said in his first comments on the issue. "Can diplomacy be the answer? In any case there are three roads to a solution: military, political and diplomatic, or all three at the same time."

However, His excellence Joseph Kabila knows very well that he is very weak militarily, and that is why the M23 is continuing to advance towards different towns of North Kivu province.

The M23 is predominantly a Tutsi rebels group made up of the Rwanda-backed National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP). The information gathered from anonymous veterans indicates that the M23 group is made up of the active Rwandese Defence Forces and its demobilised combat hardened former RPA combatants.

It is not easy to differentiate them only and usually only possible if you are a Rwandese yourself. They share the appearance, drill, discipline, language and trained together by the same motherly force of the RDF.

Rwanda has persistently denied reports that it is backing the M23, formed in the DR Congo's eastern Nord-Kivu province in April. When President Paul Kagame was being interviewed on Hard Talk he repeatedly denied supporting the M23 and at the same time he was pointing to himself as a solution.

Further, he contradicted himself by saying that the ammunitions that the M23 uses are from the government of DRC. That raises the questions of how a foreign president has the knowledge of where rebels from another nation obtain their ammunitions to terrorise the same government.

The report by the UN Group of Experts published in late June said that the M23 has been receiving direct aid from top Rwandan officials, including weapons, ammunition and recruits. This prompted many western countries to cut or suspend aid which they have been giving to Rwanda for the last eighteen years. Yet, it also raises the questions of ‘why now’ when it was not the first report released by the experts regarding Rwanda’s human rights violations.

President Paul Kagame has been autocratic for nearly two decades, killing innocent people from inside and outside his country. He has ordered the killings of journalists, government opposition leaders, his own soldiers who attempted to advise him on issues that he was not agreeing with and numerous innocent individuals.

As I write this curtain we see opposition leaders kept in prisons for simply questioning how their country is being led and President Kagame’s competence.

It is at this opportunity that I wish to thank the many Human Right activists and media groups around the globe who have not sat back to just watch what is going on in our motherland, but instead they tirelessly have raised their voice to save our people who have no voice. For example, journalist Jennifer Fierberg who is threatened consistently but has worked day and night on her publications www.africaglobalvillage.com and www.salemnews.com in order to expose the regime for what it is as well as the journalists at www.umuvugizi.com. The majority of Rwandese people appreciate the incredible job you are doing which is of more value to us than I can express.

Edited and submitted by: Jennifer Fierberg, MSW; a correspondent, Assistant Editor, and Volunteer Coordinator for NGO News Africa through the volunteer project of the UN. Jennifer is also the media co-coordinator and senior funding executive for The Africa Global Village (www.africaglobalvillage.com)