KPFA Weekend News, 01.18.2015
Friends of the Congo’s Executive Director Maurice Carney told KPFA that the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s real problems are Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and Congo’s own President joseph Kabila, not the FDLR or any other militia operating in the eastern DRC.
Transcript:
KPFA Evening News Anchor Anthony Fest: Potentially catastrophic military action, authorized by the UN Security Council, is still pending in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Security Council has urged Congo’s army to join UN combat troops from South Africa, Tanzania ad Malawi in hunting down the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Rwandan refugee militia commonly known as the FDLR, which is accused of perpetrating the Rwandan Genocide, even though the organization did not exist in 1994 and most of its members are too young to have been involved.
Nearly 20 years of regional war and resource plunder in DR Congo have already been cloaked in the pretense of hunting down the FDLR. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Maurice Carney, Executive Director of Friends of the Congo about why this is close to happening again.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Maurice, anyone who’s been following this that the US, through its Special Envoy Russ Feingold, is twisting the arms of at least four African presidents to go to war inside DR Congo’s borders.
If the tables were turned, a Special Envoy from the DRC would be in North America urging a regional war inside US borders. Why do you think the US is pushing this so hard now?
Maurice Carney: Well, I think there are several reasons. One, following up on arrangements that were made which called on the UN Force Intervention Brigade to pursue the M23 and after that, the FDLR.
The second, I think in a lot of ways the US is in alignment with Rwanda on this. Rwanda wants to see action on the FDLR, irrespective of how that action is going to turn out, especially for Congolese civilians, because we’ve been seen in the past, especially going back to 2009, when there’s been military action taken on the FDLR, the Congolese civilians are the ones who bear the brunt of the results of those military operations.
And I also think, strangely enough, that the US thinks the routing of the FDLR will somehow bring stability to the region, which we don’t think.
Really, if you look at it for the past twenty years, there’s been three primary forces of instability. The leadership in Kigali, under Paul Kagame. The leadership in Uganda, under Yoweri Museveni. And the leadership in Kinshasa, now under Joseph Kabila.
And all three of these leaders, one can arguably characterize them as sociopaths. They have kept the region in a death trap for the past 20 years.
And that’s where the pressure needs to be put, for these leaders to leave the political scene and clear up space for people who are in support of peace, people who are in support of democracy, people who are in support of stability to assume leadership in the region. And it’s at that time that we’re gonna see any kind of peace in that region.
The issues aren’t the militia groups like the ADF, FDLR. The issues are the heads of state, primarily in those three countries, which continue to fuel the conflict and breed instability in those three countries.
KPFA: Well, all three act as the heads of various resource smuggling networks, don’t they?
____________
IKAZE IWACU
Maurice Carney: Yeah,
Source: http://www.anngarrison.com/
Friends of the Congo’s Executive Director Maurice Carney told KPFA that the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s real problems are Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, and Congo’s own President joseph Kabila, not the FDLR or any other militia operating in the eastern DRC.
Transcript:
KPFA Evening News Anchor Anthony Fest: Potentially catastrophic military action, authorized by the UN Security Council, is still pending in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The Security Council has urged Congo’s army to join UN combat troops from South Africa, Tanzania ad Malawi in hunting down the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, a Rwandan refugee militia commonly known as the FDLR, which is accused of perpetrating the Rwandan Genocide, even though the organization did not exist in 1994 and most of its members are too young to have been involved.
Nearly 20 years of regional war and resource plunder in DR Congo have already been cloaked in the pretense of hunting down the FDLR. KPFA’s Ann Garrison spoke to Maurice Carney, Executive Director of Friends of the Congo about why this is close to happening again.
KPFA/Ann Garrison: Maurice, anyone who’s been following this that the US, through its Special Envoy Russ Feingold, is twisting the arms of at least four African presidents to go to war inside DR Congo’s borders.
If the tables were turned, a Special Envoy from the DRC would be in North America urging a regional war inside US borders. Why do you think the US is pushing this so hard now?
Maurice Carney: Well, I think there are several reasons. One, following up on arrangements that were made which called on the UN Force Intervention Brigade to pursue the M23 and after that, the FDLR.
The second, I think in a lot of ways the US is in alignment with Rwanda on this. Rwanda wants to see action on the FDLR, irrespective of how that action is going to turn out, especially for Congolese civilians, because we’ve been seen in the past, especially going back to 2009, when there’s been military action taken on the FDLR, the Congolese civilians are the ones who bear the brunt of the results of those military operations.
And I also think, strangely enough, that the US thinks the routing of the FDLR will somehow bring stability to the region, which we don’t think.
Really, if you look at it for the past twenty years, there’s been three primary forces of instability. The leadership in Kigali, under Paul Kagame. The leadership in Uganda, under Yoweri Museveni. And the leadership in Kinshasa, now under Joseph Kabila.
And all three of these leaders, one can arguably characterize them as sociopaths. They have kept the region in a death trap for the past 20 years.
And that’s where the pressure needs to be put, for these leaders to leave the political scene and clear up space for people who are in support of peace, people who are in support of democracy, people who are in support of stability to assume leadership in the region. And it’s at that time that we’re gonna see any kind of peace in that region.
The issues aren’t the militia groups like the ADF, FDLR. The issues are the heads of state, primarily in those three countries, which continue to fuel the conflict and breed instability in those three countries.
KPFA: Well, all three act as the heads of various resource smuggling networks, don’t they?
____________
IKAZE IWACU
Maurice Carney: Yeah,
Source: http://www.anngarrison.com/
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