tagged w/ Laurent Nkunda
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The corporate press, and the U.S. State Department, are awash in propaganda about the Congo War, also known as the Congo Crisis, or, the African holocaust, in which six million Congolese have died since 1997. They typically characterize it as an insoluble ethnic conflict, but the Congo War is, most fundamentally, an imperial resource war, in which African proxy armies fight in the interests of foreign imperial powers.The corporate press, and the U.S. State Department, are awash in propaganda about the... more
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This is the story of the deadliest war since Adolf Hitler's armies marched across Europe - a war that has not ended. But is also the story of a trail of blood that leads directly to you: to your remote control, to your mobile phone, to your laptop and to your diamond necklace. In the TV series Lost, a group of plane crash survivors believe they are stranded alone on a desert island, until one day they discover a dense metal cable leading out into the ocean and the world beyond. The Democratic Republic of Congo is full of those cables, mysterious connections that show how a seemingly isolated tribal war is in reality something very different.
This war has been dismissed as an internal African implosion. In reality it is a battle for coltan, diamonds, cassiterite and gold, destined for sale in London, New York and Paris. It is a battle for the metals that make our technological society vibrate and ring and bling, and it has already claimed more than five million lives in five years and broken a population the size of Britain's. No, this is not only a story about them. This - the tale of a short journey into the long Congolese war we in the West have fostered, fuelled and funded - is a story about you.
Barack Obama spoke often and passionately about Darfur while campaigning. But the African holocaust that will confront him first is the ongoing slaughter in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. More than 5 million have died in that conflict since 1996, and there’s no sign of a letup. As rebels commanded by Laurent Nkunda, a renegade Congolese Army general, closed in on the city of Goma in recent weeks, the United Nations’ 17,000 troops-- its largest peacekeeping force in the world--proved too weak to stop the push or to prevent a rampage of rape and looting by government forces who were there to defend the city. The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously last week to send in 3,100 more troops, but “you would need a minimum of 100,000 soldiers to have a credible peacekeeping force in Congo,” says Knox Chitiyo, an Africa expert at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank. Chitiyo thinks only an envoy of Obama’s stature might be able to impose a settlement.
Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson arrives in Congo and, trying to calculate the number of deaths over the past decade, writes, “We know that the events are approaching a holocaust scale when the margin of error is measured in millions.” Looking forward, he writes that “Security in eastern Congo is the prerequisite for political progress.” He sees one solution: “a capable, hard-hitting European military force, supported by the United States, which would stabilize the situation, give the [U.N.] peacekeeping force some breathing room and put a limit on [rebel leader] Nkunda’s ambitions.” Sadly, such a step seems “unlikely.” Britain and Germany in particular have opposed the deployment of such a force.This is the story of the deadliest war since Adolf Hitler's armies marched across... more
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Last Tuesday UN reported that Rwandan tanks fired artillery towards the Congolese troops who were fighting the Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda. But now it seems to be transparent than ever that Rwanda is playing a much bigger hand than previously thought.
Rwandan government has been secretly deploying demobilized soldiers towards the rebel front in Congo to back rebel leader Nkunda. The government acknowledges that demobilized soldiers are fighting in Congo, but they are saying that the soldiers were fighting on their own and were not sent by government.
But Rwandan soldiers contradicted the statement by government officials. Some soldiers secretly revealed that that these officials were infact fully involved in deployment of Rwandan armed forces, even providing bus fares for traveling into Congo.
Rwanda which is ruled by a Tutsi majority in the government is said to be sympathizing Nkunda's effort--he himself is a former officer of the Rwandan army, and his rebel group is mostly composed of Tutsis.
But the war is not just of "brotherhood" between the Tutsis of both countries its also about influential Tutsi businessmen who are looking for a way to plunder Congo of its riches. Some Rwandan Tutsi businessmen like Modeste Makabuza Ngoga, who has a small trade empire is seeking to influence the Congo regions known for its riches.
At the end it all comes down to money.Last Tuesday UN reported that Rwandan tanks fired artillery towards the Congolese... more
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* http://gorilla.wildlifedirect.org/:
Secretary-General’s Special Representative Alan Doss has asked for additional peacekeepers beyond the nearly 19,000 uniformed personnel already there to prevent the vast country from slipping back into “horrendous” conflict.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The top U.N. envoy to Congo warned Friday that renewed fighting in eastern Congo has heightened ethnic tensions and could lead to the renewal of a wider conflict in central Africa.
Alan Doss urged all militias in the country's hilly eastern border area — the scene of the worst fighting and a humanitarian crisis in Congo — to support a U.N. disengagement plan to bring peace to the conflict-wracked region.
He expressed dismay at reports this week that a key rebel leader, Laurent Nkunda, who initially said he would discuss the plan, was now reported to be backtracking and "walking out of any effort to move the peace process forward."
Nkunda launched a low-level rebellion several years ago claiming Congo's transition to democracy had excluded the country's minority Tutsi ethnic group, which is being targeted by ethnic Hutus from Congo as well as Rwanda.
The U.N. estimates there are about 20,000 militia fighters in the east, belonging to a number of different groups.
Among them are members of an extremist ethnic Hutu militia accused of orchestrating the 1994 genocide of 500,000 ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda. The group and others are accused of razing villages, terrorizing the local population and perpetrating rapes.
Doss told reporters after briefing the U.N. Security Council he was deeply concerned about renewed fighting that began at the end of August in eastern Congo, especially in North Kivu, and has continued intermittently since then.
"We believe we need to go ahead as quickly as possible with the disengagement plan to reduce the risk of those hostilities spreading and spilling over," Doss said. "Ethnic tensions have risen in North Kivu and that is very dangerous — no doubt about it."
He warned that "tensions are rising and we do not want to see the Congo plunged back in to the conflict which spilled over and involved neighbors. That conflict lasted for many years with horrendous consequences."
Back-to-back wars in Congo spilled into half a dozen neighboring countries and destroyed much of Congo itself by 2002.
Doss said the 17,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, whose main role is protecting civilians caught in fighting, is trying to bring the situation under control through a proposed comprehensive disengagement plan.
He said a "modest" increase in the force is sought to help implement the disengagement plan, which includes a cease-fire, separation of forces, demobilization, disarmament and the reintegration of militia fighters.
"The disengagement plan was presented to the government and it has accepted it," Doss said, "and it was presented to some of the armed groups. They have accepted it."
The U.N., is looking for support for the plan from the Security Council, countries that contribute troops to the force, and all militias, he said.
* http://gorilla.wildlifedirect.org/:
Secretary-General’s Special... more
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