Under the auspices of the Luanda Peace Process, a new monitoring mechanism aimed at breaking the cycle of violence in eastern DRC was launched last week.
Angola’s commitment to ending the bloodshed in DRC is unquestionably genuine.
However, Angola must confront a pressing reality. Tshisekedi and his regime are deeply corrupt, deeply incompetent, and want war to deflect attention from these things. Which is why their actions undermine peace.
While Angola works tirelessly to stabilize the region, Tshisekedi remains a key player in the chaos. He has skillfully hidden his own belligerence behind the so-called Wazalendo militia, a group of thugs he himself created. Far from seeking peace, Tshisekedi has manipulated the FARDC, camouflaging them as Wazalendo (so-called patriots!) to deliberately violate ceasefire agreements and keep stoking conflict.
Tshisekedi’s hypocrisy doesn’t end there.
This agent of chaos has even invited leaders of illegally armed groups in his country, dined them, and formed alliances with them, why? To keep bloody conflict going.
To start it all off, Tshisekedi decided to mount a campaign of ethnic cleansing against Congolese Tutsi communities, on the false pretext that they were “foreigners” (note how for this criminal tyrant Tshisekedi, being a foreigner is reason to massacre an entire community!)
The communities under attack fought back, under the banner of M23, and inflicted defeats on Tshisekedi and his bandits. The warmonger, after suffering a bloody nose, chose to blame Rwanda!
This is the kind of volatile situation that Angola is trying very hard to diffuse. But they can’t get very far, dealing with the Kinshasa gang, which behaves like a bunch of overgrown but very evil children.
Tshisekedi’s reluctance to dismantle the genocidal FDLR, Wazalendo and other militias he is in bed with, is very obvious. Whenever Tshisekedi is asked about them, he responds that “they are uncontrollable angry patriots.”
The Congolese military FARDC, working with the FDLR (formed from the defeated ex-FAR and Interahamwe militia) as well as Wazalendo, and other bandit groups have spread, unchecked across eastern DRC, where they commit horrendous atrocities, as they breach ceasefires negotiated by Angola (and indeed any other peace deals).
Angola, as a mediator, faces an extremely difficult choice, which is to confront the uncomfortable truth that Tshisekedi is the true culprit in his country’s instability.
Without holding Tshisekedi and his regime accountable, all the efforts to bring about peace in the region will ultimately be futile.
ellenkampire