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Kinshasa is at fever pitch after news broke that on Sunday night the
FARDC, without any credible explanation, handed back to renegade
General Sultani Makenga's M23 several cities (including Rutshuru) the
Congolese armed forces had occupied after they were evacuated by M23
last Friday.
The evacuation of those cities happened in the midst of a bloody power
struggle within M23 between pro-Bosco Ntaganda and pro-Makenga
factions.
The civilian population in Rutshuru celebrated the takeover of the
city before the jubilation was cut short by the sudden withdrawal of
the FARDC.
The spokesperson of the FARDC in North Kivu, Col. Olivier Amuli,
explained that the "chain of command" ordered the withdrawal.
As it also happened that these strange military maneuvers took place
while President Joseph Kabila was holding talks with President Yoweri
Museveni in Uganda, the "chain of command" clearly meant Kabila.
With the whirl of rumors about a deal the DRC is about to cut with
Makenga's faction and about the alleged pressure by the international
community on the Congo to pull back to the status quo ante, people in
Kinshasa now fear that the nefarious "balkanization" of the country is
occurring as we speak.
Kinshasa citizens now refer to the ongoing hostilities in North-Kivu
Province as either the "Phony War" or the "merry-go-round" fueled by
the government!
And they see the handover of territory to M23 as yet another act in
the long concatenation of actions of "treasonable collaboration" of
the Congolese government with its Rwandan and Ugandan counterparts.
"This is the Somalization of North Kivu," I overheard a female
Kinshasa University official claim yesterday during a heated debate
with her colleagues. "To render the area ungovernable so that
Americans and their multinationals can pillage natural resources with
impunity! What would Mende come up to explain this one?" she added,
referring to DRC Media Minister Lambert Mende, who had claimed over
the weekend that the FARDC had moved in to "restore the authority of
the state."
Some in the opposition can hardly hide their glee. A pro-Tshisekedi
oppositionist was joyfully predicting on a political TV show that
Kabila has just "signed there the death certificate of his regime."
In any event, whichever rationale the government would invoke to
explain its uncanny action, with the mill of "Balkanization Conspiracy
Theory" at full swing and on autopilot, Kabila and his administration
might have squandered a huge amount of political capital.
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PHOTO CREDITS: Via news24.com
