The people of DRC especially those in the east need more of our prayers at this hour of intense human suffering. The three K leaders (Kaguta, Kagame and Kabila) with military background and their domestic and foreign backers need to come to their senses and end the suffering of the people. The United Nations too needs to move faster and end the war before it loses its credibility as an institution that was created in 1945 to maintain or restore peace and security in all parts of the world.
The fall of Goma town may sharpen the appetite of victors to want to capture the rest of DRC, Angola, Namibia, Congo and Gabon and then Kenya and Tanzania. Mark my words: if concerted and collective action is not taken that is what will happen. Rwanda and Uganda, the two countries alleged to be causing this instability are too poor to be acting alone. So those supporting them should stop.
The suffering of DRC and neighboring countries including Uganda goes back to the Berlin conference of 1884/85 which handed DRC to the king of Belgium as his private estate and the end of WWI which handed over Burundi and Rwanda to Belgium. The exploitation of Congo resources by the Belgian king and the human cost involved alarmed the international community and transferred control of Congo to the Belgian government but human suffering continued with many millions losing their lives.
The Belgian authoritarian regime and economic hardship pushed Barundi and Banyarwanda into neighboring countries in search of work. Uganda has been receiving workers from Burundi and Rwanda since the 1920s. Since the 1959 Social Revolution in Rwanda and chaotic Congolese independence in 1960, Uganda has been home to so many refugees with considerable demographic impact on numbers and composition.
The Cold War confrontation between capitalist and communist forces and the geopolitical conflict between Anglophone and Francophone countries have caused too much suffering in the Great Lakes region. The death of Lumumba and the subsequent civil war resulted in too much instability that affected neighboring countries including Uganda that degenerated into serious conflicts within the government, arrest and detention of cabinet members and contributed to the 1966/67 political and constitutional crisis.
The coming to power of Museveni and Kagame that have terrorized the region is connected with control of the resources of DRC. Keith Harmon Snow has reported that:
“War for the control of the Democratic Republic of Congo – what should be the richest country in the world – began in Uganda in the 1980s, when now Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni shot his way to power…
“Paul Kagame, now president of Rwanda served as Museveni’s Director of Military Intelligence. Kagame …. [and] the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) … invaded Rwanda. The RPF destabilized and then secured Rwanda. This coup d’etat is today misunderstood as the ‘Rwanda Genocide’….
“In 1996, Paul Kagame and Yoweri Museveni … launched their covert war against Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko …. A decade later, there are 6 or 7 million dead, at the very least, and the war in Congo (Zaire) continues” (Peter Phillips 2006).
While Kagame and Museveni are being used in the scramble to control the resources of DRC, they are also using western countries and corporations to implement their Tutsi Empire project.
Eric