What is going on in Kivu ?

The integration of the FDLR into the armed forces of the DRC (FARDC) helps explain the fact that the main battalions of rapists are found within the government army. [1] Meanwhile, there is a systematic use of “accusations in a mirror,” a basic technique of misinformation propagated by neo-colonial French networks in Africa in pursuit of their obscure geopolitical interests, and applied in the government propaganda of Laurent Kabila and now his son Joseph Kabila. Thus, this war against women is attributed to all the armed groups in the region, and particularly to the political and military opposition movement called M23.

The enormity of the scandal of the last twenty years of chronic violence throughout eastern Congo appears to have finally touched Western sensibilities, so that last December an international petition [2] signed by both former president Jacques Chirac and the companion of the current president, Valerie Trierwieler, called on the UN to intervene more effectively to help those martyred women. But instead of rightly identifying the FDLR or the FARDC as the primary culprits, it named the M23 which combats both these forces.

Subsequently, in early July 2013, MONUSCO (United Nations Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo) set up an offensive intervention brigade. For the first time, under Resolution 2098 adopted by the Security Council in March, UN « peacekeeping » forces are authorized to…wage war.

In mid-July, military operations began between the opposing parties, with the FARDC having initiated combat against the M23, with reinforcements from the genocidal FDLR and tactical support of MONUSCO and its offensive brigade.

A UN report [3] which was recently leaked confirms that the FARDC collaborates closely with the genocidal FDLR.
The Ambassador of Rwanda to the United Nations, Mr. Gasana, condemned last week the fact that officers of the MONUSCO intervention brigade have held several high-level meetings with FDLR leaders to coordinate their actions ; he also condemned the increasing integration of the FDLR into FARDC, whose operations are supported by MONUSCO.

For its part, the M23 has condemned MONUSCO for handing over a strategic MONUSCO position to the FARDC for use as an artillery site, at the risk of putting the civilian population under fire. [4]
Recall that UN resolution 2098 [5] called for the disarming of all rebel groups, including the FDLR. But now it is with its FDLR allies that the FARDC is directly associated with the offensive brigade of the UN.

Remember also that one third of this offensive brigade is composed of Tanzanian troops, and that the brigade as a whole is under Tanzanian command, even as Tanzania does not hide its sympathy for the genocidal forces that its soldiers are being called on to fight alongside in the field.
There have also been reports of the delivery of arms and ammunition to the FDLR by the Tanzanian troops.

It is therefore obvious that the action of the international community runs the risk of being seriously misdirected, by going to the rescue of the rapists and genocidaires that it should be combating.
There is just cause to ask the French government, whose representative directs UN Peacekeeping affairs, to take the measures which are imperative to end the scandal of this perversion of the international community’s action – and to finally put an end to its alliance, forged over twenty years ago, with the forces behind the genocide in Rwanda.

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Luigi Elongui, Jean-Luc Galabert, Bruno Gouteux, El Memeyi Murangwa, Michel Sitbon