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The ongoing slaughter in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) proves in spades the old Swahili proverb that when the elephants fight, the grass gets hurt. Given that the beefy elephant of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) is threatening to go all in against Rwanda and her proxies, a lot more human grass is going to get hurt in the DRC and countries surrounding it.
As things currently stand, over 5 million people have been displaced in Kivu, which is at the epicentre of Rwanda’s Congolese adventurism. As the 21,000 strong force of the United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO), the UN’s biggest current deployment, has proved itself to be largely ineffective, the question arises as to how a military and/or diplomatic lid can be put on the widescale rapes, murders and child abductions that all remain endemic there and, indeed, if such a cap on such criminality is desirable to those, like Paul Kagame, who could help end this mayhem.
The DRC’s main problem is that it is abundant in natural resources and that is why imperialists have been fighting over it since the era of King Leopold, Joseph Conrad and the notorious British-Irish sodomite, Roger Casement. Add to that that the 1884/5 Berlin Conference, which, by carving up Africa in Europe’s interests, also ensured Africa had no unifying, political, economic or social forces acting on it and you get a good summary of the background to the DRC’s current wars, which pits an alliance of the DRC and its SANDF and other allies against Rwanda and its allies and proxies, the prize as always being the rich natural resources of the DRC.
Much of those resources are situated in the DRC’s North Kivu province, whose capital, Goma, has just fallen to the Rwanda-backed M23 rebel militia, which took thousands of DRC soldiers and hundreds of Romanian mercenaries prisoners there, with the nearby UN troops literally giving the Romanians a free get out of jail card by allowing these cut throats to be evacuated. As M23 also killed a not insignificant number of South African “peacekeepers”, both Kigali and Pretoria are getting hot under the collar about all this. Threats of a wider war between these two regional middle weights now dominate the diplomatic chatter down those parts.
NATO’s darling tyrant and Rwanda hard man Paul Kagame denies that his regime is funding either M23 or any of the hundreds of other militia groups running amok in North Kivu and claims, not without some evidence, that North Kivu is, in any event, overwhelmingly Tutsi, the supremacist ethnic group that rules both Rwanda and Burundi. His critics, who claim that Kagame is an imperialist gangster, can point to his close relationships with war criminal Tony Blair, Mossad and a very large number of other shady characters and outfits to make their point that Rwanda backs the M23 alliance for no other reason than to rob from North Kivu, South Kivu and all of the DRC all that they can.
Back in Kinshasa meanwhile, DRC strongman (sic) President Felix Tshisekedi is threatening blue murder on all his many enemies, Kagame and his “militia” in particular. Although Rwanda does not deny it is equipping M23 with both weapons and troops, it criticises Kinshasa for previously collaborating with the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu militia group against a mainly Tutsi rebel group, the CNDP, which was the forerunner to M23.
Although Amnesty International and other CIA controlled groups of the “international community” are calling for Tshisekedi’s head, he does have some powerful allies which include not only the old imperialist powers and their well-honed armies, but also South Africa, which is a bit of a mixed bag because of its endemic corruption. That said, South Africa is talking tough and promising to kick Rwandan butt big time in the DRC. The exchanges between the Presidents of Rwanda and South Africa, as well as their foreign ministers, have been very abrasive with South Africa threatening to go in literally with all guns blazing against Rwanda if its troops are attacked again and Kigali, for their part, telling Pretoria to bring it on and get their fat Zulu asses handed to them.
That is a threat South Africa should not take lightly. Jason Stearns’ incisive The War That Doesn’t Say Its Name: The Unending Conflict in the Congo argues that Rwanda has gone from being a primary exporter of tea and coffee to now being a major exporter of gold and other metals, which it has looted from Kivu and all with the European Union and the rest of the “international community” turning a blind eye to its crimes both against the people of the DRC and their goods and chattels.
Although this Burundian apologist makes Tshisekedi’s machinations out as the villain of the piece, the people of the DRC have been getting mauled, mutilated and murdered ever since King Leopold’s time, and Paul Kagame’s gangsterism proves that little has changed in terms of human nature since then. In exchanges with Pretoria, the Rwandan fascist has, in effect, told South Africa to keep its nose out of Rwanda’s back yard as it will otherwise get a bloody and very battered nose for itself.
As things currently stand, Kagame’s threats hold weight. The armed forces of Rwanda and their allies and proxies are all battle hardened and skilled in the type of bush war any clash between these regional titans would entail, whereas the forces of the DRC and South Africa are not.
To see how all this will eventually play out, just note that the French foreign ministry has ordered Rwanda to evacuate Kivu immediately. What that essentially means is that, once the situation in the DRC reaches a critical point, NATO, spearheaded by its fearsome French Foreign Legion, will once again enter the African fray, secure the DRC’s resources in safe, NATO friendly hands and put the quiescent Chinese, who have big economic interests in the area, back in their box.
Not that the 9,000 soldiers of the French Foreign Legion would have to do all the fighting. Far from it but a DRC/SANDF alliance, commanded, controlled and coordinated by the Legion would go through M23 and the Rwandan Defence Forces like the proverbial knife through butter.
Not that it will necessarily come to that but putting the French Foreign Legion into our calculus shows that, in Africa at least, when push comes to shove, NATO not only still call the shots but ensures that the companies that are at the heart of their evil empire remain the big winners when Africa’s elephants or anybody else fights over the scraps.
