Johannesburg
- Before a jam-packed audience, on the 19th
September 2012 Jason K. Stearns
testified in front of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Subcommittee
on Africa, Global Health, and Human Rights.
In
his testimony, he started by saying “I have been working on the eastern Congo for
the past eleven years. In 2008, I was the coordinator of the United Nations
Group of Experts on the Congo, and I have also worked on the country for the
United Nations peacekeeping mission, as a senior analyst for the International
Crisis Group, and as journalist and writer”.
From
his research on the ground, he stated the following;
Background to the current crisis
Beginning with the to rise
of the new M23 rebellion, is the result of the failure of the Congolese peace
process to deal with the persistent causes of conflict in the region. While
there are no easy fixes to these deep-rooted challenges, the United States
government can help avert a further escalation by helping to broker a
settlement. This will require a significant change in how the US engages with
Rwanda, but also for Kinshasa to provide the political vision necessary for a
solution.
The M23 mutiny
There is no doubt about
Rwanda’s involvement. It has been documented by a United
Nations report released in
June, by Human Rights Watch, and by the Rift Valley
Institute’s own
researchers. In response to this evidence, donors suspended around $90 million
in aid to Rwanda, including $200,000 from the US government.
Despite this, the situation
has not improved. Rwanda has continued to support the
M23, including by sending
in troops to Rutshuru near the Ugandan border in early July. Other armed
groups, largely ethnically based, have also gained in strength, in part due to their
links to the M23 and the Congolese army’s focus on the mutiny, and have engaged
in tit-for-tat massacres of the local population.
He argued that ”The only
way this kind of deal can work is if Rwanda plays a part. This means reformulating
the kind of pressure put on Kigali, from asking them to stop providing support
to the M23 – an outcome that is hard to measure, given the clandestine nature of
the backing – to becoming an active part of the solution". "It would have to
allow the Congolese government or the United Nations to deploy troops along its
border with M23 territory, as well as arrest key leaders of the mutiny, some of
whom are based in Rwanda".
This kind of deal will
require strong and sustained pressure on Kigali. Donors, chief among them the
United States and the international financial institutions where Washington has
influence, have some hard choices to make. They can no longer see Rwanda’s
admirable successes in health care, education and peacekeeping as separate from
its interference in the Congo
In concluding he said that “the
situation in the eastern Congo is bleak. But this latest crisis is also an
opportunity to change the way the outside world engages with this region, and
to address some of the structural problems that have caused these crises to
recur with tragic regularity. It is time to act. As a matter of moral
consistency, the United States cannot continue to help fund the Rwandan
national budget and at the same time continue to spend hundreds of millions of
dollars on programs to stabilize the eastern Congo".
So what are the implications? How will the world view us Rwandans, because of our hungry leaders? Will they swallow their pride and "do the right thing"? Or they will continue to tarnish our image, for the sake of fulfilling their stomachs? its up to you to make a change, and change starts within.
JD Mwiseneza
Johannebsurg
