In a recent diplomatic briefing, dated 11 October 2023, the Rwandan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Vincent Biruta demanded nothing less than the obliteration of the Tshisekedi-backed FDLR genocidal militia, a venomous thorn in the side of the entire Great Lakes region.
Let’s take a trip back in time to understand the genesis of this problem. Back in the summer of 1994, as the International Community reeled from the horrors of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, a mass exodus of two million Rwandan refugees, carrying with them a toxic cocktail of anti-Tutsi propaganda, including soldiers and militiamen responsible for the butchering of their fellow countrymen, crossed the border into North Kivu. The exodus of the latter were allowed to cross the border, fully armed, and settle on the doorstep of their homeland, flouting international norms with brazen impunity.
Since then, these forces have never looked back, and have reorganized and entrenched themselves within the North Kivu Province, inflicting terror upon the local Congolese populations, particularly the Kinyarwanda-speaking ones. These genocidal fanatics, driven by a pathological hatred for all things Tutsi, wasted no time launching attacks on the Banyamulenge and other Congolese unfortunate enough to be branded as “Tutsi” and it has practically never stopped since then. Congolese soldiers, Mai-Mai, etc., associated with the FDLR, increased attacks to take the property of people classified as “Tutsi” and chase them away or kill them.
The result has been an exodus of epic proportions of these vulnerable Congolese into neighboring countries, desperately seeking refuge from the horrors of the FDLR’s reign.
Meanwhile, the FDLR has shamelessly thrived on a black market trade in natural resources, maintained sinister alliances with the regular Congolese army(FARDC), corrupted provincial assemblies, birthed a litany of armed tribal gangs – the notorious 266 armed groups within DRC borders – and propagated a vile rhetoric of hatred and discrimination against Kinyarwanda-speaking populations, questioning their very belonging to the Congolese state.
The FDLR’s rap sheet reads like a horror story etched in blood. They are the malevolent architects behind not one, but two catastrophic wars in the Congo – first in 1996-1997 and then, for an encore, in 1998-2002.
Since the turn of the century in 2001, the FDLR has attempted an alarming 19 invasions of Rwanda, using Congo and Burundi as their launching pads. Their alliance with the late dictator Pierre Nkurunziza in 2014 further solidified their grip on the region. Their intentions are far from covert – they openly aspire to overthrow the Government in Kigali and to complete what it called “the work”, that is to say, the definitive extermination of the Tutsi “race”.
The FDLR’s history is stained with the blood of countless innocent victims, and their intentions are nothing short of a recurring nightmare for the people of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
As Minister Biruta rightly stressed, the FDLR is not just a regional threat; it’s a ticking time bomb with global implications. The need to canton and definitively dismantle this genocidal militia is not a matter of choice but a moral and strategic imperative.
Leave a Reply