Last Sunday the Ugandan website, commandonepost, published an article with the title “Rwanda-DRC conflict could end Kagame hegemony”, which leaves no doubt that this website still is very determined to thwart efforts at peace in the region. As has been exposed many times in the past, commandonepost is a vehicle of anti-Rwanda propaganda.
Its latest article, in these times when responsible authorities are trying to get relations between Kigali and Kampala back on good track, shows their interest is to derail peaceful co-existence. It is undermining the good work authorities in both capitals have done to repair relations, while at the same smearing Rwanda with pro-genocidaire lies, mixed with Kinshasa propaganda.
Among the things that this article, written by one Byamukama, claims – rather incoherently – is that: “unless the underlying problems between Uganda and Rwanda are addressed, we might see the M23 problem and the mistrust in Kinshasa as the only way to solve the Kigali Kampala long term rivalry, even if battalions of regional forces are deployed. This is the lesson we have learnt from the previous Uganda Rwanda intervention in DRC.”
What exactly does this word salad mean? What “underlying problems” between Uganda and Rwanda” aren’t being addressed?
Also, M23 is a Congolese problem, between the government in Kinshasa, and sections of the Congo population in the east who formed the M23 movement. So, how is it that the mistrust between Kinshasa and M23 can be “the only way” to solve so-called Kigali and Kampala long-term rivalry?
The talking points of Byamukama are exactly the talking points of FDLR, or other anti-peace groups such as RNC, for whom good relations between Uganda and Rwanda are least desirable.
This becomes clearer when he brings up “previous Uganda-Rwanda interventions in DRC”, even when that has nothing, zero, to do with his supposed concerns of conflict between Kinshasa and M23.
Everyone has seen the détente that has come about through the outreach efforts of no less a personality than Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba, special adviser to President Museveni, as well as Kigali’s reception of his goodwill outreach. The border is now open, and commerce and people are moving well between Uganda and Rwanda.
To see someone trying to undermine these efforts through one-sided stories of “past interventions in DRC” is to see an agent of destabilization.
The article’s other strategy, to make Rwanda look the bad party in the conflict between Congolese, is one executed with utmost bad faith – which is the intention anyway.
The article’s author talks about the potential of M23 to draw neighboring countries into the DRC conflict, while carefully avoiding the (outsize) role of the regime of Tshisekedi in the failure to resolve that conflict.
First of all, it should never be forgotten that the M23 movement exists because the past Congolese administration reneged on agreements that itself signed, to incorporate into the country’s military Congolese Tutsi officers and men – as is their rights as citizens of the Congo – as well as to recognize the rights of Congolese Tutsi populations of the east. But then for some unexplained reason the government refused to honor its part of the agreement, and instead embarked on persecuting, harassing, and discriminating Tutsis Congolese in the FARDC (Congo army). They did that with genocidal intentions, of killing not only all Tutsi Congolese in the army, but also, all Congo’s Tutsi citizens in the east.
All the time, the government was targeting them with hateful messages, with claims they were “Rwandans.” The regime in Kinshasa has made it a crime to be Rwandan, even as it tries to deprive sections of its own population of their nationality. Therefore, M23 rose as a movement to fight for the rights of its people.
With Tshisekedi, the demonization; with the same lies of “ba-Rwandais!, has gone up a different level. It has become fully genocidal. Everyone has seen videos of the atrocities on social media. FARDC together with FDLR allies are perpetrating genocide on Kinyarwanda-speaking, Tutsi Congolese citizens.
Why does commandonepost fail to highlight these issues in its hatchet job on the Rwandan leadership?
The author probably shares an agenda with FDLR.