Kinshasa "Residents of the Republic" breathed a long sigh of relief when the auspicious news of the collapse of what the capital city's daily Le Potentiel called the never-ending "merry-go-round of Kampala talks."
I borrow the expression "Residents of the Republic"--from the French "Résidents de la République"--aptly coined by the late French songster Alain Bashung to describe Congolese "patriots" in contradistinction to M23 "terrorists" (Le Potentiel) who I personally like to call "Rwandan proxies of M23" or "doppelganger anticitizens," a phrase lifted from the essay "Naturing the Nation" by Jean Comaroff and John L. Comaroff.
But, behind and beyond M23 terrorists, obviously lurks Paul Kagame--with his crazy scheme of land grab in parts of the North Kivu Province of the DRC.
That this long-held scheme of the Rwandan President brooked no compromise could be seen through the reckless, cavalier attitude of his M23 minions at the negotiating table in Kampala. And their attitude was all the more maddening to Residents of the Republic as the Congolese government is footing all the hotel bills of M23 delegates as well as paying their outrageous stipends at Kampala! It therefore goes without saying that the collapse of these talks is most welcome news to folks here in Kinshasa.
The role of western countries (in the guise of the ubiquitous entity known as the "international community)--chief among them the United States--is also (mis)construed by the Congolese as supportive of Kagame's land grab objective, which is universally referred to in the DRC with the dreadful B-word of "Balkanization."
And, as it turns out, the State Department has to blame former Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Johnnie Carson for what will undoubtedly prove to be the longest lasting misunderstanding of the American diplomacy in the DRC.
During a presentation at the Brookings Institution titled "Finding a Lasting Solution to Instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo" made on February 21 of this year, Ambassador Carson said:
"Clearly, a sophisticated and internationally-backed solution is the only way forward. We were able to achieve such a solution to end the conflict in the former Yugoslavia through the Dayton Accords. We were able to end Africa's longest running civil war, the conflict in Sudan, through the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that was negotiated by the IGAD states and supported by the United States, Norway, and Great Britain. A similarly energetic and international effort is now required for the DRC."
As the "sophisticated and internationally-backed solution" to conflicts in Yugoslavia and Sudan implied the partition of those states, the Le Potentiel's editorial mentioned hitherto takes Amb. Carson's suggestion--which it quotes at length, by the way--to mean that the US objective in the region is to break up or to "balkanize" the DRC--or, to quote the article, "the hypothesis of bartering a part of the national territory for peace."
(http://www.digitalcongo.net/article/95458)
In any event, something new and scary has emerged this time around in the long-drawn cycle of Rwandan-fueled "rebellions" followed by peace negotiations and integrations of erstwhile rebels into the Congolese national army and government.
It's the chilling realization that Rwanda has finally come out in the open to lay claim to vast swaths of the Congolese borderlands where, through its M23 proxies, it hopes to set up a "heterotopia"--a space of exclusive ethnic alterity, the mirror image of the tyrannical ethnic dictatorship across the border.
Hence, the ongoing "soft" ethnic cleansing in territories held by M23.
In July, for example, Human Rights Watch reported that, "M23 rebels have summarily executed at least 44 people and raped at least 61 women and girls since March 2013 in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo."
Since then M23 have upped the ante by looting and burning entire villages and by imposing forced labors of foxhole digging upon civilians in territories under their control, thus recently triggering the mass displacement of unwanted ethnic groups.
Emerging Sunday from the stalled Kampala talks, DRC Foreign Minister Raymond Tshibanda said:
"We are still ready as the delegation of the [DRC] government to continue this effort because we think that the quest for peace shall be a permanent and sustained effort."
But Kinois in the streets and in sidewalk bars of the Congolese capital, who've been spoiling for a fight for quite some time, are now keeping their fingers crossed for an all-out no-holds-barred apocalyptic war with M23 and Rwanda!
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PHOTO CREDITS: Via Twitter account @FARDC13
