The More It Stays the Same — regarding U.S. Backing of Humanity-Crushing Dictators — Al Jazeera Examines American Complicity in Prolonging the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Civil War

© 2012 Peter Free

 

29 November 2012

 

 

Citation — to the expert panel interview that this essay is about

 

Shihab Rattansi, Inside Story Americas — the US role in the DR Congo Conflict, Al Jazeera (29 November 2012)

 

 

Citation — to the United Nations evidentiary report that the interviewees referred to

 

Steven Hege, Nelson Alusala, Ruben de Koning, Marie Plamadiala, Emilie Serralta, and Steven Spittaels, Letter dated 12 October 2012 from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the Chair of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004) concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo [S/2012/843], United Nations Security Council (15 November 2012)

 

Note

 

To retrieve this PDF, you will need to go to the United Nations document webpage.

Enter “S/2012/843” (without the quotation marks) in the Search box and click. Choose your language at the top of the page that appears after you clicked.  The document will then load.

 

First — just because it comes from Al Jazeera doesn’t mean that it is biased against the United States

 

I have been reading and watching Al Jazeera for years.  It is concise, fact-oriented, and almost always reasonably objective.

 

If Al Jazeera has an obvious slant, it is in a humanitarian direction.  It focuses on the importance of ordinary people’s lives.

 

Al Jazeera escapes the wealthy bubble mentality that characterizes virtually all American media.

 

 

Caveat — the following deals with the side of American foreign policy that contradicts our repeatedly professed democratic values — and the above two citations require readers’ willingness to wade through a bit of detail

 

The Al Jazeera interview is about 19:15 minutes long. (The 25 minute total on the video’s elapsed time bar includes a second, unrelated topic.)

 

The United Nations report is 204 pages, but the gist is covered in a 3 page executive summary.

 

The U.N. report is pertinent because it provides proof for the Al Jazeera interviewees’ contention that US-supported Rwanda and Uganda are aiding rebels inside the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

 

 

The key question — regarding United States policy and the Democratic Republic of Congo

 

Shihab Rattansi summed the issue:

 

Is the US’s patronage of Rwanda ensuring many more years of conflict and death in the Democratic Republic of Congo?

 

Shihab Rattansi, Inside Story Americas — the US role in the DR Congo Conflict, Al Jazeera (29 November 2012) (at 0:00 to 0:10 minutes into the video clip)

 

 

Why any of this matters

 

Three points:

 

(1) American foreign policy makes us look bad, when it contradicts our professed democratic values.

 

(2) Short-sighted geopolitics harms American interests over the long term, and “payback’s a bitch.”

 

(3) Helping other people kill hundreds of thousands to millions of innocents constitutes bad ethics.

 

In recent decades, the United States has become skilled at making all three mistakes simultaneously, apparently without any subsequently thoughtful self-regard and self-correction.

 

 

Background — the civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo

 

The DRC’s five year civil war has taken 5 to 5.4 million lives.

 

Congolese rebels have been the subject of repeated UN Security Council censures and embargoes:

 

In a unanimously adopted resolution, the Council extended until 1 February 2014, the sanctions that were first introduced in 2003 as the DRC reached the end of a brutal civil war that engulfed the vast country on and off for five years and is estimated to have killed as many as five million people.

 

The sanctions comprise an arms embargo against armed groups that are not part of the Government’s integrated army or police units following the end of the civil war, and also a travel ban and asset freeze against individuals or entities that have violated the embargo or are otherwise designated.

 

The Council also requested Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to renew the mandate of the group of experts monitoring these measures until 1 February 2014.

 

The resolution also contained strong condemnation of the M23 soldiers, who mutinied from the DRC national army in April, and which occupied Goma, the capital of North Kivu, last week after launching a new wave of attacks that have uprooted more than 140,000 civilians.

 

© 2012 UN News Centre, Security Council extends sanctions on DR Congo rebels, condemns latest attacks by M23, United Nations (28 November 2012)

 

 

Rwanda and Uganda are murderous meddlers in the DRC’s civil war

 

The U.N. report documents proof that Rwanda and Uganda are directly supporting the DRC’s M23 rebels.

 

It summarizes its conclusion by saying:

 

The Government of Rwanda continues to violate the arms embargo by providing direct military support to the M23 rebels, facilitating recruitment, encouraging and facilitating desertions from the armed forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and providing arms, ammunition, intelligence and political advice.

 

The de facto chain of command of M23 includes Gen. Bosco Ntaganda and culminates with the Minister of Defence of Rwanda, Gen. James Kabarebe.

 

Senior officials of the Government of Uganda have also provided support to M23 in the form of direct troop reinforcements in Congolese territory, weapons deliveries, technical assistance, joint planning, political advice and facilitation of external relations.

 

Units of the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces and the Rwandan Defence Forces jointly supported M23 in a series of attacks in July 2012 to take over the major towns of Rutshuru territory and the Congolese armed forces base of Rumangabo.

 

Both Governments have also cooperated to support the creation and expansion of the political branch of M23 and have consistently advocated on behalf of the rebels.

 

M23 and its allies include six sanctioned individuals, some of whom reside in or regularly travel to Rwanda and Uganda.

 

© 2012 Steven Hege, Nelson Alusala, Ruben de Koning, Marie Plamadiala, Emilie Serralta, and Steven Spittaels, Letter dated 12 October 2012 from the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo addressed to the Chair of the Security Council Committee established pursuant to resolution 1533 (2004) concerning the Democratic Republic of the Congo [S/2012/843], United Nations Security Council (15 November 2012) (at page 3, under Executive Summary) (paragraphs split)

 

Note

 

To retrieve this PDF, you will need to go to the United Nations document webpage.

 

Enter “S/2012/843” (without the quotation marks) in the Search box and click. Choose your language at the top of the page that appears after you clicked.  The document will then load.

 

The United States’ dictator-supporting foreign policy — has arguably contributed to the continuation of the Congolese war

 

Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi interviewed three experts on the civil war.  These were:

 

 

Kambale Musavuli (Friends of the Congo)

 

Nii Akuetteh (African policy analyst)

 

Herman Cohen (assistant secretary of state, African affairs, G. W. Bush Administration)

 

The interviewees’ consensus was that United States’ support of authoritarian regimes in Rwanda and Uganda has allowed both dictators to aid rebels in the DRC, without fear of American criticism or retaliation.  Details (which fairly persuasively support their contention) are scattered through the interview.

 

The panel pointed to economic interests in eastern DRC as motivation for the foreign meddling.

 

Mr. Musavuli and Mr. Akuetteh placed their hope for American policy change in the American public.

 

 

Regarding Republic of Rwanda president, Paul Kagame

 

Al Jazeera’s video includes a clip of President Kagame that shows him claiming innocence, regarding his involvement in the Congolese war.

 

The ex-cop in me immediately alerted to the fact that President Kagame’s delivery was classic of “the Big Lie” type of con man.  His serial indicators of untruth are so obvious, that the clip could be used to train police interrogators to recognize con men.

 

Note

 

President Paul Kagame’s denial spans the 4:10 to 5:18 minute segment of the Al Jazeera video.

 

Take a look, if you want to confirm your skill at spotting deceptive people.

 

According to Shihab Rattansi, President Kagame is the same guy that former American President Bill Clinton — no stranger to telling monumental untruths himself — once called, “one of the greatest leaders of our time.”  (This quote coming at 1:16 to 1:22 minutes into the video.)

 

 

The moral? — We may be blind to American-sponsored nastiness abroad, but those who suffer from our mistaken foreign policies are not

 

That may explain why China is having (perhaps temporarily, due to its own foibles) relatively little difficulty making inroads in places that used to be staunchly pro-American.

 

More broadly, the United States cannot much longer persuasively continue to claim to be the light of humanitarian democracy, when it manifests the opposite, across broad swaths of the world.

 

When we lose the intangibles that once made us a beacon of freedom, we will have only our material wealth for others to emulate.

 

I am not persuaded that this would be an admirable trade.  Personal and national wealth are fleeting.  Standards of vision and integrity are not.  Witness ancient Greece’s continuing ability to shape humanity’s thinking.

 

When we lose our national integrity, we will have lost the soft (persuasion-oriented) power that has served the United States so well, for so long.

 

That is why American complicity in keeping the Democratic Republic of Congo’s civil war alive is harmful.  Not just to the Congo’s people, but to our own.  Nobody likes exploitive hypocrites.