Reading key resolutions from the Luanda Mini-Summit on Peace and Security of Eastern DRC, that convened yesterday in Angola, one cannot help but wonder: how many times will the DRC regime sing the slogan of disarming and repatriating FDLR whose terrorist members have fully integrated in FARDC?
Needless to say that those resolutions should be given chance; yet it should never be forgotten that very many summits, conclaves, conferences and other strategic meetings have previously decided that DRC should disarm, repatriate FDLR. But nothing ever materialized, and everything it remains only on paper.
The leaders of Congo deliberately brushed aside the idea of disarming FDLR not only because the genocidal force is integrated into the Congolese military (FARDC), but also because the FDLR are their partners in the ongoing genocide of Congolese citizens of Tutsi ethnicity. In fact the partnership of the Kinshasa regime with FDLR is such that the latter occupies sizable territories in Eastern DRC, where FARDC hardly goes.
The genocidal force further executes a lot of donkey work on their behalf; the work the lazy unprofessional and undisciplined FARDC have failed to execute. It is an unholy alliance that has to be discontinued if DRC is to hope for peace and stability.
To think that FARDC can disarm and repatriate FDLR is however is to be delusional. It actually is FDLR (the blacklisted genocidal, terror group) that has been leading attacks against the M23 movement – a group whose cause is the noble one of asserting their rights as Tutsis and citizens of DRC, as much as is Tshisekedi himself is. When the genocidal FDLR undertakes attacks on M23, it only shows both it, and FARDC, are one and the same.
While no one trusts the Kinshasa regime to disarm FDLR, it should not be forgotten that the latter have committed genocide crimes they are yet to account for and they should actually be repatriated to Rwanda for trial. Failure to do that will only confirm DRC as always the destabilizing factor in the region.