With M23 In Congo, Kagame And Museveni Duplicate Blueprint That Installed RPF In Rwanda Power

If the true paymasters of M23, Gen. Kagame and Gen. Museveni, are not held accountable then it’s only a matter of time. The blueprint that installed RPF in power in Rwanda will place M23 in charge of Congo. Possibly at the cost of millions more Congolese lives: adding to the estimated toll that’s already in the millions.

[Publisher’s Commentary]
 
M23 was a vessel that Rwanda and Uganda hoped to use to install a pliant regime in Congo. M23 was actually a smokescreen for Rwanda’s army and Uganda’s. The overall commander was Rwanda’s Defense Minister Gen. James Kaberehe according to the UN Report by a Group of Experts.
 
Rwanda and Uganda launched a war of aggression  against a sovereign state without provocation. As long as international corporate media continued to refer to the invading army as “rebels” then the war of aggression could continue unabated.
 
The inaccurate “rebels,” label legitimized M23 with the implication that it was a domestic Congo force. While M23 may include some Congolese fighters and figurehead leaders many fighters were recruited from and trained in Rwanda and Uganda, the UN report found. Moreover the invading army that seized and ransacked  Goma included soldiers from Rwanda’s regular army units, the UN said.
 
The Group of Experts who authored the Congo report deserve a Nobel Peace Prize. They may have helped avert the deaths of millions more Congolese.
 
M23’s proposed path to power has been successfully used before: when Uganda installed Paul Kagame in power in Rwanda in 1994.
 
Gen. Kagame was celebrated as Rwanda’s savior in 1994. The United Nations has never formally investigated the assassination of Rwanda president Juvenal Habyarimana. That incident immediately ignited the mass killings of hundreds of thousands, with mostly ethnic Tutsi victims but also Hutus. Recently Gen. Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, Gen. Kagame’s former army commander told a South African court that Kagame ordered the assassination. Kagame’s plan , according to one argument, was that by then toppling Habyarimana’s demoralized army, he would be hailed. No one would question how ethnic Tutsis could rule a country made up of 84% Hutus.
 
Even while Habyarimana’s assassins have yet to be established, culpability for the mass killings that followed should not be limited. Gen. Kagame did not fall from the sky. He grew up in Uganda where his family took refuge from Rwanda’s ethnic killings targeting Tutsis in the 1960s. As a young man he later fought alongside Museveni when the latter seized power in Uganda in 1986. 
 
By 1990 Kagame had become Uganda’s chief of military intelligence in the army. In October of that year, he cut short his training program at Fort Leavenworth here in the U.S. where he had been sent as a senior officer of Uganda’s national army and returned to take command of the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) which had invaded Rwanda with the help of and control of Uganda; much like M23 is today controlled from Kigali and Kampala.
 
At the time of the 1990 attack France, which was a major sponsor of Habyarimana’s regime protested the invasion. But the Bill Clinton Administration blocked attempts for U.N. Security Council action.
 
Rather than being sanctioned for backing the invasion of a neighboring country, Uganda continued to receive more weapons and U.S. military training of its officers. Had this war of aggression been effectively dealt with in 1990, it’s possible that the genocide of 1994, four years later, may never have occurred. 

So when we talk of U.S. “guilt” accounting for Kagame now being allowed his excesses, it should predate the 1994 genocide and go back to the 1990 invasion from Uganda, which the Clinton Administration ignored.

That’s why this time it was critical for the international community to swiftly deal with M23 and place sanctions against its leadership and outside sponsors. It’s also no coincidence that it was France’s representative to the United Nations, this time, who insisted on publicly exposing Rwanda’s and Uganda’s role, with memories of 1990 in mind.
 
Otherwise Kagame and Museveni would have replicated the 1990 formula. 
 
Invade Congo; claim the fighters are actually Congolese “rebels”; seize some territory starting with Goma; inch forward while fighting a war of attrition and further weakening Congo president Joseph Kabila’s unpopular regime; and then, perhaps, at some point, instigate a Habyarimana-style assassination of Kabila.
 
M23 would then seize power during the mayhem that would follow; just as the RPF under Kagame’s command did in Rwanda in 1994. Gen. Kabehere, Rwanda’s defense minister and effective M23 commander is a veteran of the invasion of Rwanda from Uganda in 1990.
 
What now? 
 
If the true paymasters of M23 which has committed war crimes, Gen. Kagame and Gen. Museveni, are not held accountable then it’s only a matter of time.  The blueprint that installed RPF in power in Rwanda will place M23 in charge of Congo. 
 
Possibly at the cost of millions more Congolese lives: adding to the estimated toll that’s already in the millions.


“Speaking Truth To Empower.”

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