Unlock the free editor
Roula Khalaf, editor of the FT, selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
The writer is an associated professor at Simon Fraser University and author of ‘The War that does not say his name: the endless conflict in the Congo’.
Last week, in the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the rebel group M23 captured the city of Sake, next to the lake. The fighting of the weekend also affected rubber, a city of 1.5 million inhabitants surrounded by hundreds of thousands of displaced people.
Western leaders seem paralyzed when managing many conflicts, but that does not have to be the case in Congo Democratic Republic. There, more than 6 million people are displaced, at least one third because of the M23 conflict, but the outsiders could easily make a difference. The fact that they have not done so makes many Congolences conclude that nobody cares. Others believe more and more in a more sinister conspiracy: if the powerful stay out while the Congolese suffer, they must love it. It is not surprising that the popularity of Russia is increasing among the Congolese.
It would be easy to act because the main instigator of the M23 conflict has been the Rwanda government, a country that depends on foreign aid. According to six reports from a group of UN experts, Rwanda has sent thousands of troops across the border, deploying Earth-Aire missiles, snipers, armored vehicles and special forces. He USThe EU and the United Kingdom have condemned Rwanda’s actions.
But talking is cheap. Often criticism of Rwanda contradict other actions. In the midst of violence, Commonwealth leaders We meet in Kigali In 2022, and the EU gave €40 million to support the deployment of the Rwanda Defense Forces (the same army involved in the assault on the Democratic Republic of Congo) in Mozambique. The EU and its member states are also investing More than 900 million dollars In Rwanda in the framework of the Global Gateway program.
Under its previous conservative government, the United Kingdom intended to send asylum applicants to Rwanda to deter illegal migration. France, a driving force behind the decisions of the EU, has been anxious to keep the Ruandesas troops in northern Mozambique, where they have protected the coastal gas facilities outside the total enemy of the Islamist rebels. Some EU officials sympathize more with well -organized diplomats from Rwanda than with their Congolese counterparts.
The Ruandese diplomats say that their army is not deployed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but if it were it would be to protect the Tutsi Congoleña community and its own borders against the rebel democratic forces of liberation of Ruanda. The FDLR include combatants who participated in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
This narrative, however, goes back the historical sequence. It was the emergence of M23 that caused an increase in hate discourse against tutsis and collaboration between the Congolese army and the FDLR. Undoubtedly, the Congolese government should address discrimination and end their support for armed groups. But the M23 has exacerbated the evils he quotes.
Rwanda, whose budget comes at least one third of the help of donors, trusted their reputation to attract tourists and investors equally. The National Basketball Association of the United States is associated with Rwanda in its African basketball league. “Visit Ruanda” is stamped on the T-shirts of the Paris Saint-Germain and Arsenal football clubs. The country aspires to house a formula race 1. President Paul Kagame likes to appear with celebrities such as Idris Elba and Kendrick Lamar, perhaps waiting for his stars dust to hit him.
In the past, donors have used this influence. In 2012, they suspended 240 million dollars in disbursements for help for alleged interference in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Barack Obama called Kagame and asked him to put an end to support for M23. After a few months, he stopped and the M23 collapsed.
This time it seems that we live in a different world, one in which migration, business investments and other national concerns are more important than humanitarianism, and where apathy triumphs over solidarity. One in which we denounced the Russian aggression in Ukraine but we shrug when millions are displaced in central Africa.