FDLR say they have lost their trust in the international institutions and the international NGO’s
Are all FDLR rebels’ genocide suspects? NOT entirely! Does Rwanda really want to solve the FDLR issue? Facts point to a very complex situation. Celebrity Congolese officer Colonel Mamadou Ndala was killed in January 2014 – and the suspects will shock you. Did you know which global NGOs operate in FDLR areas and why are they there? How many Rwandan refugees are in DR Congo? The figure will leave you breathless. How did Joseph Kabila end up as President of DRC? Belgian veteran freelance journalist Marc Hoogsteyns has visited and shared meals with FDLR for years and was also there recently. He reveals what he saw. He is the first journalist to do it. We bring you the part 2 of the narration in his own words:
The end of a myth, when elephants fight ……
As many of us already had forecasted the UN and the FARDC did not use the momentum after the victory against the M23 group to attack the FDLR. Mudacumura and his men now felt relatively safe in the Masisi hills: they had participated in the war against the M23, their good relationship with the ANR, the fact that a big part of the local Monusco troops were Tanzanians and South-Africa (the relationship between Rwanda and Tanzania and South-Africa was very bad at that moment and the Tanzanian government had a positive attitude towards the FDLR).
In 2012 the total number of FDLR fighters had dropped to a couple of thousand but the group had managed to forge close relationships with other militias on the spot. But it became obvious that the true nature and the character of the organization had changed: their goal to return to Rwanda and to re-in store their presence there via a political party that was still proclaiming the old values of the Hutu power movement had proven to be a hoax.
More and more FDLR civilians and also combatants had already returned to Rwanda and they were in close contact with those who remained and telling them that it was OK now to return. Most of the FDLR civilians and fighters were now already second generation and for them the Rwandan genocide was a very far off event. T
hey were told by their former comrades in arms that who returned to Rwanda they were first hosted for a couple of weeks in a transit camp where they enjoyed complete freedom of movement and that they could return after that to the villages where they came from. They told them that their kids could go to school and that they were able to start up small businesses.
The UNHCR confirmed all this. As did several researchers. Some of the returnees had end up in jail because they had been involved in killings during the genocide of ’94 and it is also possible that some innocent returnees were punished for crimes they did not commit. But overall the initiative that had been put up by the UNHCR and the Rwandan government started to produce its first results. Especially in South-Kivu a lot of FDLR wanted to return to Rwanda; the pressure of local Mayi Mayi groups who were still considering them as a Rwandan treat was growing.
A lot of FDLR families had settled down previously on land in the southern part of the province that had not been exploited by the local Congolese groups and their farms started to produce crops now. This provoked a lot of jealousy. It is a fact that the FDLR was far better organized (and still is) than most of the other groups and militias in this region.
They build schools small hospitals, they became traders in minerals and agricultural products. A lot of the other locals had never seen this before. I talked to many returnees in Rwanda in this period. Most of them talked without fear. Last year I spend many months in Gisenyi and in Kigali to set up my small press agency.
One of my neighbors was and FDLR returnee who had fought in the FDLR ranks in South-Kivu for many years. He was shot in his leg and he was crippled and decided to start up a farm in the plains between Fizi and Baraka. He was also teaching in a small school that the FDLR had set up in this region and even a lot of Congolese kids attended his classes. But the pressure of local Mayi Mayi groups on the FDLR grew stronger and stronger. This resulted in more killings.
He told me that he was fed up with it and that he decided to return to Rwanda. He also told me that the internal anti-Rwanda propaganda of the FDLR was still strong and that they were often told that they would be killed or put in jail when they would go back but his friends who already returned had told him that this was not the case. So he gave himself up, his family followed, they returned and they went through the reintegration program.
This man is now a teacher in a secondary school in Gisenyi, his daughter finished high school last year and was the first of her class. She received a grant from the Rwandan government to study in the States.
This case might be too positive to talk or write about and in other cases the reintegration failed. But rarely because of unsettled scores: in a lot of cases these returnees have big problems to readapt in a country that has completely changed, they have been living in camps and they were on the move through the DRC for years and they are not used to take control over their own lives.
Some of them never touched money before they came back, others miss the DRC, and others become alcoholics. And some of them even want to return to the DRC because they simply had a better life there. The development of Rwanda struck them so hard that they had problems to readapt themselves.
So instead of solving the FDLR issue the Congolese government turned its attention on the problems in and around Beni and the ADF-Nalu issue. According to a lot of Congo watchers – including myself – the ADF-Nalu issue is another hot potato on the Congolese plate that is widely misunderstood.
Just like Masisi that region has become another soccer pit in which disputes between high- and lower ranking politicians can be fought out and another conflict area that can be put on fire whenever the need arises in Kinshasa to distract the attention of the international and the international communities from other disturbing facts that might harm the reputation of the people involved.
Unlike the last war against M23 Monusco did not get involved directly in the fighting and the whole initiative turned into complete chaos after one of Kabila’s top commanders – the guy who took credit for the victory against the M23 – was killed in an ambush. There are serious indications that he was killed by his own colleagues.
We’re not writing an article about this war now but it is important to mention it to understand the internal dynamics of what’s currently happening in the DRC. And it is very difficult to understand well what is going on, even for us. Beware of people who claim to know everything about the African Great Lakes , to have the best contacts, to have access to everybody and who are boosting that their research is rock solid.
Most of the people we talk to have their own agendas, simple people in the field are often manipulated and cannot put the misery they go through in a bigger perspective One of my friends calls the war in the DRC a chicken shit war. I call it an elephant shit war: elephants operate deep in the bush, often in bigger groups but they are difficult to approach.
These elephants come in to the villages at night, destroy houses and kill people and leave big piles of smelling shit behind. They leave before people like us can catch their actions on camera. The war in Congo is invisible and that’s another reason why many journalists do not like to work here.
And the situation is changing so quickly that You have to be able change Your opinion all the time. The Africans have a proverb for this: when elephants fight the grass gets trampled. It has become very difficult not to become too cynical about this, especially not in the DRC. It is only the local population that is paying a very high price for all this.
The FDLR today
When I visited the region last month I had to change my opinion about the situation on the spot again. Travelling through these badlands is very expensive and trips should be well prepared for security reasons. Most of the international NGO’s do not allow their foreign staff to venture in this region and the Monusco soldiers (UN) are sticking to their bases.
The information of what is going on inside Masisi is filtering through to Goma but this info is rarely correct. That’s why we decided to organize a couple of field trips. My goal was to reach an FDLR camp in Bweru, just outside Mweso, to talk to the commanders and the people in charge.
I had applied for a grant to organize this shoot (I mainly work for television) but the money came in late and I had to postpone my trip a couple of times because I had other jobs. I wanted to find out how strong the FDLR still was, who was still supporting them and how they were looking at the future. I also wanted to find out if they had changed.
I knew some of them from the past and I wanted to hear their stories. I spend more than two weeks in Masisi. For security reasons we split up this visit in several parts, never telling anyone how long we would stay and which roads we would use to move around. We also had to organize extra security and we asked the FDLR to pick us up near Mwesu.
Before reaching Bweru we had to cross an area in which nowadays a lot of kidnappings and killings take place. The FDLR is often accused of being behind all that. I’ll get into all that later on.
At the end of August the FARDC launched another offensive against one of the radical wings of the FDLR, the small group of fighters of Mudacumura. Mudachumura is a hardliner and he is wanted for several war crimes in the DRC.
I do not want to get into all the names of the splinter groups and all the militias in the region. But on the 31st of May of this year a lot of FDLR members rebelled against him and formed their own group, the FDLR-CNRD (Conseil National pour le Rénové et la Democratie) .
They were asking for a biometrical survey and to register the FDLR fighters and their families as refugees in the DRC. And they also wanted to relaunch the dialogue with Kigali. They had also asked Mudacumura to surrender and to face trial because they did not want to be associated with his crimes any longer.
In the small vacuum that was created by this quarrel another of Mudacumura’s officers who was commanding their so called CRAP, small commando units that where mainly operating in the Virunga area and in the plains of Rutshuru, wanted to take over control of the FDLR. But according to many of my sources this guy, he calls himself ‘Omega’, was also considered to be a hardliner.
So the organization was split up in three groups: the FDLR-CNRD who stationed its headquarters in Bweru, the FDLR-Mudacumura who was based in and around Luve, Birambiso and Kibirizi and the FDLR-Omega who was mainly active around the Virunga Park (where they controlled until recently most of the charcoal trade).
Mudacumura also had a lot of fighters in the Walikale area. The total amount of FDLR fighters still under arms was estimated at approx.. 500 to 600 six months ago. The CNRD took most of them (approx. 350 elements) with them when they split , Mudacumura stayed behind with 100 to 150 fighters and the CRAP units (commando units of 6 to 8 rebels) were being judged at 100 elements.
I checked these numbers with different sources. In 2014 several NGO’s and also the UN had written that the total amount of FDLR rebels and civilians was still estimated at 250.000. But according to my sources and the people we talked to on the spot (including the FDLR-CNRD) this number had dwindled to 50.000 or 60.000.
Nobody knows the exact number of Rwandan Hutu’s still present in the region; a lot of them still live in far off pockets in South-Kivu. And they lost contact with their fellow countrymen in North-Kivu. Mudacumura and Omega had refused the biometrical survey. Giving up their potential stock of young and potential fighters and losing their protective sheet of civilians was not an option for them.
But the others were tired of being manipulated and to fight for other warlords and governments. Mudacumura reacted as devil in a box and killed several people. In August president Kabila was touring the country in an effort to gain support for staying longer in power.
Kabila is reaching the end of his second tour as president of the DRC and the Congolese constitution forbids him to run for a third term. His reign has been a disaster and his own population wants him to go. But in August het met the Rwandan president Paul Kagame in Gisenyi.
It is not well known what the two men were discussing but a couple of days later the announcement was made in Goma that the FARDC would try to dislodge Mudacumura from his stronghold in Luve. We decided to follow the troops and we reached Luve and Nyanzale on the 7th of September. The FARDC had managed to dislodge Mudacumura from his base in Luve but the FDLR commander had withdrawn his fighters to Kibiriso and had managed to inflict serious losses to the FARDC.
Before talking to the officers we talked to many soldiers and they told us that they were not motivated to fight: they were lacking ammunition, food and supplies and they were all tired. The FARDC press officer was not on the spot and we were told that we could not film the ongoing operation.
Instead they directed us back to Goma where the FARDC had set up a press conference to show captured FDLR soldiers. We talked to these people and found out that they were not real rebels but just simple peasants who had been plucked off their fields by the FDLR to join them, others had fled the fighting and were arrested on the road. The whole offensive against the FDLR turned out to be a hoax. But we had learned a lot during this trip.
In Luve we had briefly visited Mudacumura’s old stronghold and it struck me how well build and structured this camp was. It had been built with the support of NGO’s such as Caritas, Oxfam GB, some German NGO’s, etc. Even the toilets and the sanitation system had been built by these NGO’s.
The people who guided us through the camp were joking when I told them that I was surprised to see all these NGO signs in the camp and they told me that Mudacumura had well been pampered by them and that the only thing that was not delivered to him and his men was the toilet paper to clean his ass.
How could a rebel group that did not even represent a recognized group of civilians benefit from this kind of support ? Some of us had always thought that the FDLR was financing itself via mercenary jobs, road blocks, the trade in minerals and/or the production of charcoal.
I talked about this with many people who are knowing the region well and they all agreed on the fact that all this might have been the case ten years ago – although these factors might have been exaggerated a bit by several national and international organizations to raise the stakes of the conflict – but that nowadays the FDLR was mainly surviving on the support they were receiving from the bigger NGO’s.
They could not apply for this support themselves but they were using in between Congolese groups and militia’s instead with which they mingled and which they were using as a kind as a protective screen of even as fighters to fill up their emptying ranks. Most of these in between groups in the Masisi region are Hutu, others such as the ACPLS are Hunde.
And most of these groups are controlled behind the screens by politicians and/or business men in Goma and in Kinshasa who can use them at will to raise their stakes. Or even worse: by terrorizing the local population and by making the Masisi region quasi inaccessible for those who want to want to inform themselves about the ongoing events – nowadays kidnappings, killings and rape have become very common in this region – this criminal show can go on without any problem.
With the growing terror come thousands of extra IDP’s (internal displaced people) who are resettling in camps elsewhere and who need support. The international NGO’s jump on all those occasions to find sponsoring in Europe and in the States, extra money is coming in and jobs are being created.
Many of the local Congolese NGO-workers are in contact with these militias and their middle men in Goma and a lot of the aid that is flowing in to Masisi is being sold again on the markets of places like Goma, Bukavu; Mweso, Kitchanga and Walikale. And another big part of this aid is being used to shelter and feed the FDLR.
I do not make myself very popular by stating this and I do not want to question the good intentions of many NGO workers but some of the cliché’s that are being used in the European media – many of these media do not rely on their own reporting but rely on the research and the reports of well-paid NGO-consultants – are out of date now.
Stating today that the war in the eastern Congo is a result of conflict for minerals and the feud between countries like Uganda, Rwanda and Congo is very naïve. That might still have been the case two to three years ago but since then Uganda and Rwanda have practically not been involved anymore in the east of the country. But they are still very well informed and they have eyes and ears all over the place. When I visited Bweru, a couple of weeks later and when I talked there with the FDLR-CNRD leadership, this theory was confirmed by some of their cadres.
They also told me that this was the biggest reason why they wanted to break the never ending circle of manipulations or ‘magouilles’ (monkey business deals) that were offering them no better future. They told me that all this also had convinced them that their return to Rwanda could and should not depend on those same international constitutions that were using them as a marionette to sustain their own presence and their own activities in the area.
I might be accused of being cynical again but one of the engines of the conflict that is ravaging the region is the presence of these big international aid agencies and the way they handle the ongoing events.
The land issue
The other big reason is the fact that there is no control or whatsoever over the distribution and the use of land. It has become clear to a couple of critical and independent researchers that during the last couple of years a lot of land in this region has changed ownership.
Most of the farms in Masisi and in the Rutshuru plains were sold to a couple of Congolese politicians, very rich and well connected Tutsi investors, lobby groups from Katanga who are using middle men in Goma to obtain land and members of the presidential family. Outside Goma a big slaughterhouse is now under construction to slaughter the cows from Masisi.
It’s going to be operational soon and it will have to be fed with meat. Even some parts of the Virunga Park have been turned into ‘pasturages’ (grazing land for cows). Those new owners turn agricultural land into ‘pasturages’, they chase off the people who have been living here for generations and who have been working for the previous owners and these people also end up in IDP camps where they are being convinced to join the one or the other militia.
The lack of an organized and structured administration, the fact that the Congolese justice system is utterly corrupt and that the communities in the villages cannot defend themselves against these rich investors who are all well protected by influential politicians, bankers, is the main reason why all this can happen.
In these mafia practices there is not room for inter-ethnic solidarity. Tutis’s are discriminating their own people. Hutu’s, Hunde and Nande are doing the same thing.
There is one case that struck me very hard: in a small place called Bwiza, just outside the Virunga Park, a couple of thousands of Tutsi returnees from Rwanda (they had fled the Hutu violence in Congo several years ago but they had returned to Congo) resettled on a stretch of land that is part of the Virunga Park.
But the land was sold in a dubious way to a very rich Tutsi investor in Goma who wants to turn it into a pasturage. One of the first things he tried to do when he received this illegal land title was chasing off the people of his own tribe. The whole issue was brought before court in Goma but nothing came out of that ! Believe it or not but the same Tutsi’s that were chased out of Congo by the FDLR more than 15 years ago and they came back because they thought they would be protected by people like Nkunda and Makenga. They are now living side by side with the FDLR.
Both groups are fed up with the system and decided to work together to defend their interests. The land issue is indeed very important and unsettled: many Congolese Tutsi’s fled to Rwanda after the M23 and the CNDP were chased out, many of them were killed and all their possessions were stolen from them. But the land they once owned is still there and in some cases it was stolen from them by their own, rich brothers.
The grunge against this mafia is as big in Tutsi, Hutu as in Hunde-circles and this can trigger off a new conflict. In Tutsi circles this will lead to violence and revenge. It is also important to know all this to understand the FDLR issue. I’m afraid that in the coming future several of these unsettled bills will result again in killings and more violence.
FDLR-CNRD, Masisi
When I was visiting Bweru, the so called capitol of the FDLR-CNRD of Wilson Irategeka (CNRD stands for ‘Conseil National pour la Rénové et la Democratie) we could not talk to Wilson but we were received by a small committee of the other leaders.
I can site all their names but I think this is not so important. They were very friendly and open and they told me right away that they knew that my wife is a Tutsi, that I’m passing most of my time in Rwanda and that I’m also talking to people high up in the Kagame regime.
They also told me that my presence in their midst would be known by the Rwandan intelligence services who had spies in their camp with cellphones and What’s The FDLR-CNRD was now engaged in a small war with Mudacumura’s men in the border area between the Walikale district and Masisi.
They also told me that they wanted to return to Rwanda and talk to the Rwandan government and that they wanted peace. But some of them also told me that they would like to stay in the DRC and forge an alliance with pro Rwandan groups and see to it that the Tutsi refugees from Masisi would be able to return home.
They were fed up to deal with middle men in Goma who had turned this conflict into a money making business. They were in contact with their former rebel friends in Rwanda who told them about their own experiences and problems and they told me that they had lost their trust in the international institutions and the international NGO’s. Most of them wanted to talk directly to the Rwandan government.
They had come to the conclusion that in the future they could only rely on Rwandans and/or fellow Kinyarwandan speakers to solve their problems, the problems that were devastating Masisi and the political problems in Rwanda.
They also told me that they were surprised to see how Rwanda had developed itself over the years and that some of their kids already went to school in Rwanda. For the first time in my life I felt at ease with these people: I told them what I saw in Rwanda in 1994, in Congo during and before the AFDL war. They agreed with most of it. They also told me that some of their old comrades were now fighting in the ranks of the Burundian CNDD-FDD and they all admitted that this cause was lost.
We spend several days in this camp. We were always well protected because the FDLR did not trust the surrounding Nyatura militia-men (Congolese Hutu’s) with which they had forged an alliance to survive. They also gave us inside information about the ongoing events in Masisi and the war against Mudacumura.
Mudacumura had previously also been chased out in the Walikale region by other Congolese militia’s, the Cheka and the Mazembe (Mazembe is also the name of a very famous Congolese football team but this team in not connected to the militia).
The FARDC had moved after that in to take control of the former bases of Mudacumura. But they had not respected the deal with the Cheka and the Mazembe to pay for the ‘services rendues’ and that had resulted in the burning to the ground and the killing of several FARDC positions and their new visitors.
I admit that it is very complicated to explain this high level Asterix-Obelix story to outsiders. But it illustrates perfectly the mess we’re dealing with in this region. I also talked to them about possible contacts between them and other Rwandan Hutu and Tutsi opposition groups outside the DRC and outside Rwanda.
Their criticism on the Kagame regime was very strong but it lacked the underlying hatred I felt in most of the discussions that I had in the past with other FDLR-cadres and members and the Interahamwe. They said that there is no press freedom in Rwanda, that opposition parties cannot operate freely there ! I asked them if the system they had been defending for years was truly democratic and if the current policy of Kagame could not be the result of the criminal policy of the Habyaramima regime.
I told them that their credibility to talk about democracy was very dubious. But none of them got angry when I told them that. One of them, an FDLR commander who had even received artillery training from North-Koreans in Lubumbashi, told me in private that he and his men would probably have killed me on the spot when I should have visited or encountered them 10 years ago. Because they all knew that I was living in Rwanda and that my wife was a Tutsi.
He had even seen pictures of my kids on Facebook. There is only one way for grunts like me who are covering this conflict to stay professionally and physically alive: You should talk to everybody, to friend an enemy and You should never hide what You really think or what You really are. Why? That simply does not work here, especially not with Rwandans because they are very well informed! They all have cellphones and they are all checking out things on the social media.
The commander admitted that he and his men had killed a lot of people over the years while they were fighting all those wars and he told me that his soldiers were still the best organized and trained lot in the region. He added to that that the FDLR was often accused of crimes they had not committed and that the Congolese were often doing that to cover their awn wrongdoings.
He was still very young when he and his parents fled from Rwanda and he had not killed anyone during the genocide. But he turned out to be a good fighter in Congo and he was selected for several training camps that were organized by foreigners. He had also fought in Congo-Brazaville. Before they went to these training camps they were given the order never to tell them that they were in fact Rwandans. He also told me that in fact a lot of FDLR did not want to go back to Rwanda because they didn’t know that country well and they felt more at home in the DRC. I asked him if he knew about the events in Bwiza where Tutsi returnees had joined forces with the FDLR and he started laughing. But he knew about it.
He had also heard about the ‘Green march’ and he admitted that this had caused the deaths of thousands of his fellow friends and refugees. While we were having dinner the others told me the story of another Belgian that had approached them in 2012 with a Katangese middle man of Kabila.
The guy was an ex officer of the Belgian army and he told them that it would be better for them to move away from the Rwandan border to the Congolese interior. According to them the Belgian was given 300.000 dollars in Kinshasa to motivate the FDLR leadership to move to the interior but the FDLR only received one third of that sum and they never left Masisi.
The guys I was talking to in Bweru were fed up with all those stories and it was clear to me that they were really seeking direct contact with officials in Kigali. These opinions had not filtered down yet to most of the FDLR refugees in the camp: when we asked them if they wanted to return to Rwanda they told us that they would be killed there by the ‘inyenzi’ (and inyenzi is a cockroach and it is an insult for Tutsi’s).
One of the people I talked to in the camp even told me in private that his two sons had gone back to Rwanda where they had joined Kagame’s army and that he received every month a part of their salaries to feed his family. He even wanted to give me their cell phone number because recently some of the cash had not passed through.
The far west
The Masisi region has become a lawless area: just last month the Congolese government and the FARDC organized a small ceremony in Mweso where a bunch of Nyatura fighters would turn in their weapons and promise the Congolese authorities to regain their villages and to abandon the armed struggle. They arrived in Mweso, they handed over 20 very old AK-47’s and a defective rocket launcher, they all had a beer and regained the Nyatura territory.
We even met one of them in the FDLR stronghold in Bweru and we met him again when we left the area in a nearby village. He was pissed drunk, carrying a pistol and he was shouting at the Congolese police who were too scared to touch him.
That little PR-show in Mweso was also a hoax: the middleman ( a politician from Goma who is well connected to several political leaders in Kishasa) from Goma who had fixed the ceremony had received thousands of dollars to set it up , he had shared it with the guys who were ‘surrendering’ and they just went back to their posts in the bush where they received new weapons.
The truth is that these same Nayatura are now responsible for most of the kidnappings and the killings in this area. A couple of weeks ago they killed several villagers near Kitchanga and most of these people were Hunde. Before that they kidnapped six Congolese aid workers who were working in this region for a Norvegian NGO. The Norvegians paid thousands of dollars or ransom and the guys were released. But the taxi motor drivers who had brought them to that part of Masisi were killed because the Norvegians did not want to pay for them. A foreign MSF aid worker was also kidnapped in the same region and MSF also paid thousands of dollars to release him (or her).
After that most of the Masisi area became a shiny red no-go zone for foreign aid workers who are now relying for one hundred percent on Congolese staffers who risk their lives when they tell their bosses the truth about what is exactly going on there. Most of the NGO’s who are working in this region know that they are indirectly supporting the FDLR and most of the other militias on the spot.
Most of them also know that a big part of their aid is being sold again on local markets and that this traffic is controlled by local militia leaders. There are no UN-soldiers present on the spot to follow up on all that. The local government is also trying to promote tourism in the Virunga park. Gorilla permits are a lot less expensive in the DRC and some of the tourists even climb the Nyragongo volcano.
This part of the province is relatively safe but according to some of my sources the park rangers are in contact with some militias who are receiving cash not to harm the tourists. This went very wrong a while ago when a Belgian group of tourists was robbed at gunpoint.
The whole matter was covered under a blanket of forgiveness ! The chaos in the region is total and this will most probably not improve with the upcoming elections in sight. A lot of the crimes such as kidnappings and rape that are currently been committed in this part of the DRC are being put on the record of the FDLR.
The group committed several crimes in the past but in their current status they can’t be put responsible for most of these crimes. The FDLR is and was often accused of crimes they did not commit. The same thing happened with the CNDP of Laurent Nkunda and the M23. In Congo it has become an old habit to accuse Rwandophones of wrongdoings Congolese bandits and militia’s commit.
There are nowadays several high ranking politicians in Kinshasa who have good contacts with several militias in this region; even rebel groups that are fighting each other. By putting their eggs in several baskets they control most of the chickens.
Elephants
I count several elephants on the spot who are trampling down the grass: some of them are defending the colors of the big landowners, others are defending the colors of high ranking Congolese politicians and others do not know that that they have become an elephant themselves and that they have become a tool that is fueling the conflicts in the region.
Other elephants might have left the scene for a while to regain strength but they are also determined to come back. Most of them do not care about the locals and they are thriving in this chaos. In some cases they are even making love to each other on the same perch and this makes things even worse.
Then FDLR has become a very small puppet in this game. Their numbers in the east of the DRC have dwindled over the years and most of the radical elements have either been killed or will be killed in the coming future. The moderates are looking for a way out.
Their supporters in Europe still have problems to admit that the Hutu power case is definitively closed now It would be unfair to classify all the last remaining FDLR elements as ‘genocidaires’. I wanted to list up all my encounters with the FDLR to compare the brutal and genocidal ideology of those who were responsible for the Rwandan genocide with those I met in Masisi last month.
The ones I met before , during and just after the Rwandan genocide were real devils, the ones I met during the following wars in the DRC were also still devils. But the ones I met in Bweru last month had taken a distance from that old Hutu power ideology.
Some want to stay in the DRC and to help to stabilize that region. They are convinced that they cannot trust any longer the international community and the Congolese government to do that. They are fed up, tired and they want peace ! They want a better future for their kids ! Others want to return to Rwanda and some of the ex FDLR who already returned to Rwanda want to return to the DRC.
The events in Bwiza have proven that both the Hutu and the Tutsi communities can trust each other and the Congolese Tutsi community that was shaken up by several wars and had to flee their villages want to come back. In the other communities in North-Kivu (especially Hunde and Congolese Hutu) the distrust against their own leaders and militia commanders is growing day by day.
When You talk to these people they will often tell You that the situation in the region was very good in the 80-ties and in the 70-ies and they want to return to that in the future. They are aware of the fact that they will never be able to do that without the return of most of the Tutsi’s.
It has become clear to everybody that the UN and most of the big aid agencies have missed their goal to stabilize the region big time. On the contrary: they are now fueling the conflict ! It is very difficult to anticipate the future of this region but their might be other wars in the making and there are already indications that they will start soon. Who will be to blame for those wars ?
The geopolitical picture of the region is changing day by day. Rwanda and Uganda want to develop the east of Africa with other countries such as Tanzania and Kenya.
A more stable and prospering Kivu region on the Congolese side and a stable Burundi can only contribute to that. And stability in the Kivu’s can only be guaranteed if all the protagonist will put their differences aside to work out a durable solution.
Today I see Tanzanian and Kenyan delegations passing through Kigali and I see Rwandan delegations leaving for Dar Es Salaam. Two years ago the attitude of Tanzania towards Rwanda was still very hostile. Does that mean that Rwanda and Uganda want to conquer the east of Congo ?
I don’t think so. The polarization in the discussion about what really happened in the DRC (and in Rwanda) is becoming very obvious. But a lot of scholars and journalists do not seem to understand that. Instead of exchanging info they are accusing each other to support this or that side.
The conscience is growing in this part of Africa that the local communities will have to take their destiny into their own hands to settle things and to develop the region. Instead of pumping millions of dollars in the sunk vessel that still calls itself the DRC and instead of paying billions of dollars to an organization such as Monusco the international community should support that initiative.
Conclusion
I really hope that this long paper was interesting for You. It is based for 80 percent on my own findings. Some of these findings might be subjective but that’s normal. The old cliches that are proclaiming that the war in the east of the DRC is a result of the greed for minerals and the expansionism of Rwanda and Uganda are contradicted by the facts on the ground.
Other factors have overtaken the importance of these misunderstandings and the international aid agencies and the countries that are sponsoring them should look into their mirrors and correct themselves. In Kinshasa the decision has been taken to postpone the elections to 2018. This will provide most of the protagonists in the Kivu’s extra time to consolidate their wrongdoings. The international community is criticizing all this but is not taking action.
Part I of this Narration was published last week and can be seen by clicking HERE. This research was sponsored partially by the journalismfund.eu.