As the United States negotiates a draft peace agreement between Rwanda and the Tshisekedi regime, one thing is clear. If the U.S. wants peace in the Great Lakes, Senior Advisor for Africa Massad Boulos must bring the hammer down hard on Tshisekedi.
The Congolese inept ruler isn’t inching toward peace; rather he’s stalling for time, and if the clock runs out on his bluff. Bizarrely he would rather drag the DRC back into further conflict.
Now, Tshisekedi didn’t show up in Doha out of goodwill; he crawled in, tail between legs, because his military is a shambles. The FARDC, his military, together with his coalition of Southern African forces, Burundians, FDLR Interahamwe as as European mercenaries that he brought in to “save” him were routed. By the liberation forces of M23.
Now, MONUSCO – the so-called UN peacekeeping force – sits idle in its barracks.
SADC troops are going back home, through Rwanda. So, what remains to prop up Tshisekedi’s regime?
Yet after his comprehensive defeat, the Kinshasa idiot keeps the “terrorist” label on M23/AFC. He accuses Rwanda of “aggression” while shaking hands in Washington. Does this man even know what side of his mouth he’s talking from anymore?
Tshisekedi isn’t negotiating. He’s buying time, hoping someone, somewhere, will rescue him from the collapse he engineered.
But the time for diplomacy as usual is over, and the US should know it.
Tshisekedi has abused every ounce of goodwill. Now Boulos must apply real, unrelenting pressure.
If the United States genuinely wants peace in the Great Lakes region, you must force Tshisekedi to negotiate with the Congolese political-military movement M23/AFC and agree on a federal system of governance in DRC. Only federalism can address the long-ignored grievances of eastern Congolese communities and create a durable peace in the Great Lakes Region.
For there to be a chance of peace the US must bring down the diplomatic hammer on Tshisekedi, and maybe he will begin to genuinely address the root causes of conflict in the DRC – beginning with his propping up of the genocidal FDLR, and piping down on his anti-Rwanda bombast.
ellenkampire