It’s time to end this rebel nuisance

Four African nations are engaged in unprecedented military offensives against undesirable elements fighting for dubious causes.

The elements are rebel groups in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

The countries are the DRC, Rwanda, Uganda and Sudan, at least the southern government. The DRC and Rwanda target the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). This is an extremist Hutu group comprising mainly remnants of people responsible for the Rwanda genocide of 1994.

Enjoined is the National Congress for People’s Defence, formerly led by renegade Congolese General Laurent Nkunda. This comprises Tutsis in the DRC, but targeted by the FDLR, pathologically hateful of everything Tutsi.

Former enemies

On the other front are the DRC, Uganda and the Government of Southern Sudan. This alliance targets the Lords Resistance Army, a northern Uganda group that has waged more than a 20-year-war. Mr. Joseph Kony leads it.

The offensives must humble DRC’s President Joseph Kabila. His former enemies, presidents Paul Kagame of Rwanda and Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni hold trump card for possible restoration of order in a region Mr Kabila barely governs.

Moreover, in terms of what might have been, Uganda and Rwanda are midgets compared with the DRC. The country is the size of western Europe and surpasses the region in mineral wealth and stupidity.

The rebels have given themselves bogus names. The FDLR has nothing to liberate Rwandans from. It simply aims at ousting Mr Kagame and resuming exterminating Tutsis.

The FDLR’s existence provided Gen Nkunda with an excuse to metamorphose into a self-proclaimed defender of Tutsis. By associating itself with such a group, the DRC Government displayed excess state foolishness.

Comical were it not for its atrocities, the LRA is but a voodoo outfit. Granted, genuine concerns among the Acholi people that a victorious Mr Museveni would avenge on winning power existed.

Little of that happened. Moreover, presently people in northern Uganda have peaceful means of dealing with whatever grievances they might have against the Government.

People’s defence

The first casualty of the offensives was Gen Nkunda. He launched his latest major offensive in August. It displaced some quarter of a million people. So much for people’s defence!

Details of Gen Nkunda capture last Thursday after some 3,500 Rwandan troops marched into the DRC, remain contradictory. Suffice it to say, Mr Kabila wants him extradited. The International Criminal Court at The Hague is salivating. It wants Gen Nkunda and some of his commanders for crimes against humanity.