Maurice Carney – Executive Director and Co-founder of Friends of the Congo
The Executive Director and Co-founder of Friends of the Congo, Maurice Carney, explains on the micro of Paul Jay, Senior Editor at The Real News, the need to educate the Western public on the destructive nature and dangers of militarizing Africa.
He starts off by talking about US policy towards Africa and particularly the Democratic Republic of Congo. He talks of Mali briefly but elaborates more about DRC. He mentions the UN backed peace agreement which last month fell to get the signatures of Tanzania and South Africa, these two countries justifying their stand that they hadn’t had time to read properly the document.
However, many commentators believe that the collapse of the meeting to sign the agreement was due to the issue of leadership of the international neutral force of 3,000 to 4,000 soldiers and the right approach to bring effective stability to the Great Lakes region. This goes in the same line of thought of Maurice Carney who does not find it to be possible to bring stability without sanctioning the countries causing insecurity.
The US being a close ally of Rwanda and Uganda has time and again shown its reluctance to condemn these two countries despite their persistent involvement in DRC. They have even some of their officials named in UN reports as criminals who committed crimes in DRC. Though this remains true, Maurice Carney also requests from African governments to have their houses in order and get more organised to be able to protect the continent against outsiders.
On another note, he adds for example that it’s not that the West hasn’t wanted to punish Robert Mugabe for his position against his former colonial masters’ interests in Zimbabwe, but it is only because of how the SADC group of countries is organised in defending their sovereignty and dignity.
To listen to Maurice Carney full interview please click here.
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