NKUNDA - THE REBEL WE LOVE TO HATE

It is ironic that a man called “I love” can engender so much hate from the World. The “Rogue General” is a tag that has stuck and is used as if it were a fact of life, as he is the main belligerent that is causing all the troubles in Congo. Even the UN peacekeepers have declared war on him, the press have vilified him, and even a US government official has called for him to just go away. He is a complex man and is as much a symptom of the Congo crisis as a cause of the crisis. If he were to be removed from the situation then maybe a more virulent rebellion would emerge and even worse eventualities like a Rwandan Invasion again. I had an unfortunate falling out with a good friend who is a VOA correspondent over what I saw was an unfair bias towards the Congolese government view. She tried to be as fair as she could but impartiality is the journalist’s version of a fool’s errand, sometimes no matter what you say to balance it; you will always be accused of bias one way or another. Especially when sides are as entrenched as they are in Congo.


Nkunda is more of a liability than a blessing to Rwanda; few in the outside world take the threat of the FDLR seriously, these genocidal remnants of the old regime are as much a threat to Rwanda as they ever were. True the Rwandan military can deal with the threat easily but they could still cause major carnage. Nkunda has made a number of mistakes that have landed him in this situation and perhaps deserves the “Rogue General” tag; he is generally assumed to have aid from Rwanda but if he did, then he would be fighting for control of Kinshasa and not Mashakye. His grievances are local and so is his scope, besides he can easily fund himself from Coltan mines and wealthy Businessmen.


His first mistake was sticking to the ethnic line; he claims to be a protector of the Tutsi when it is all Congolese in those areas that need protection from him. The Congolese army commits mass-rape, torture, killings, looting and pillages as a matter of course; as was witnessed by Arnaud Zaytman of the BBC when they took Rebel-held towns last week. He described looting and uncontrolled frenzy as they took the town; there were no townsfolk left to rape so it was held to a minimum. Even when the RPF first invaded Rwanda and was a majority Tutsi entity; their agenda was non-ethnic and in due time they were able to achieve support from all sides. By claiming to protect one side he is excluding many potential allies, and that shows that he is purely a reactionary and not a revolutionary.


The tremendous wealth that abounds in Eastern Congo has skewed his thinking and given a whole new dimension to the dynamic. Congo has always been ungovernable; I remember my Grandfather telling me stories of our greatest king Rwabugiri, who conquered parts of Congo only to find it totally unruly. Ironically Rwanda did the same 150 years later and was caught in the same quagmire. The history of Congo is peppered with countless local heroes who shone bright for a while till they were washed away by the river. The Rwandese capture of Congo is the greatest story never told; imagine a country the size of Belgium taking over a country 80 times its size, with 10 times the population. I love to sit with veterans of that war and hear those telling stories of pure insanity and I wonder why the world never hears of them.



Like the Mai-Mai; a mystical cult of savages that believe that dousing water on their bodies gives them immunity from bullets. They came screaming like banshees armed with only two or three rifles as they rush towards you in riot formation, a machinegun simply mowed them down like a harvesting scythe of death. They never stop screaming, even as they die; as they withdraw they inform you that they will be back at 3:45 tomorrow afternoon. And low and behold they arrive on time and screaming again. Every failed attack results in the gruesome death of the “Mama Social” a lady witch who blesses the water and picks the time of attack. The worst times are when they stalk you through the jungle with arrows bringing silent death to columns of soldiers.


The world still understands Congo through the prism of “The Heart of Darkness” a novella written by Josef Conrad over 110 years ago that is in everyway relevant to the current situation in Congo. Many think that the Book is a negative portrayal of Africans but in reality it is as much about the savagery of White men as it is about Primitive Blacks. The line between the Noble Savage and the Savage Noble is constantly blurred; and that is the Congo paradox: it makes corrupt men out of honest ones. Nkunda is Kurtz, Nkunda is Captain Marlowe. That is why I was at odds with my American friend; it is very dangerous to divide people into Heroes and Villains because they are fluidly changing. Nkunda may have started with noble ambitions but the “curse of wealth” struck again. Whatever you say about him he is a freedom-fighter to many, but he is also a multi-millionaire. He has taxed mines, farmers, border traffic to amass a great fortune for himself and his backers. The international dimension cannot be ignored; the information age is driving Nkundas rebellion as foreign companies vie for coltan for Laptop circuitry whatever the human cost. Dell, Toshiba, Hewlett Packard, IBM and all other computer manufacturers are equally culpable for the gang-rape of Congo; Nkunda and Kabila held her down while they ravaged her.


The war has lead to tremendous suffering in the local population; some see this war as not between Nkunda and the Government but a war against innocents. Both sides are accused of serious human rights abuses against women, children, the elderly and all these claims are justified though unverified due to the lack of independent observers on the ground. Mass-rape, torture, and death are widespread; neither side can claim innocence. When I visited Kenya I saw the biased view presented to the world; the government view was prevalent. Joseph Kabila was seen arriving in Goma to finish off the Rogue General; with sheer determination and muscles bounding out of his tight shirt. They presented short straggly mangy imps who they described as Tutsi soldiers who looked more like Eskimos than Tutsi. The government went on an offensive to win the propaganda war first; claiming to have disarmed Hutu militia, protected Tutsi from Nkunda and even giving out their rations to displaced people.


The world lapped it up; the world is fed-up with the Congo crisis after 11 years of it, plus the Rwanda war which started even before in 1990. The crisis is intertwined with Rwanda and the Great Lakes regions as a whole. Even if an almighty military presence wiped Nkunda off the map, there would still be a problem. As much as the world wants an end to this crisis, it will not come easily. Kabila was winning the media war while Nkunda kept silent and soon Kabila transformed that media bias into a real advantage. The world press became his stenographer merely stating what he instructed them. Nkunda was injured, Nkunda was dead, Nkunda was using child-soldiers, Nkunda was committing mass-rape, Nkunda was using human-shields. And Nkunda just kept quiet and soon he went from being a “Rogue” to being a common criminal in eyes of the global media.


His vilification was complete when the UN; supposedly the most impartial of organisations switched sides and started to support Kabila. Bear in mind that the UN has been accused of massive human rights abuses; from mass-rape, plundering minerals, killings of civilians and everything that the Government and rebels have been accused of. So the UN claimed to be impartial while providing logistical and military support to the government; it is like a referee playing as an extra striker for the home team. Nobody in the world media thought this was peculiar; how could the UN take sides? How was this going to make things more peaceful? As Northern Ireland, Sri Lanka, the Basque region in Spain have shown: these matters can take forever to resolve. Ending war and making peace are two different things.


The next few weeks were unnerving; Kabila got air and intelligence support from the UN and the French in particular, he went from strength to strength. The media joined the band-wagon and trumpeted his victories; which seemed hourly. Nkunda seemed to be on the ropes and nearly knocked out by the combination of the FDLR, FARDC, UN and local militias. I was tremendously saddened by these losses and I wondered why; was it just because he was of Rwandan descent? The truth is that his destiny and that of Rwanda are linked. If he loses then that will give such a moral boost to the Hutu militias and Kabila will flex his muscles on the Goma-Gisenyi border. Tutsis in Congo would be wiped off the map; Hutus in Congo would be further oppressed by their own kind.


As unreliable and uncontrollable as he is; the Rwandan government cannot openly support him; neither can they let him fail. The superior artillery gave the Kabila forces a brief advantage and made them drunk on power as they pursued him into the jungle. The cracks in the armour were there for all to see; the Congolese Army is undisciplined, inexperienced, and poorly trained so few have stomach for a fight. Unlike the troops of Nkunda who are fighting for what they see as survival and some them have fought since the RPF invaded in 1996/97. So soon all these gains were being lost, Nkunda moved to guerrilla tactics against an unwieldy giant.


The crisis is bound to continue as Congo is unable to tackle the underlying issues that underpin the crisis. Congo is big and under-developed especially in the East; whole Armies can hide in its jungles undetected. Hutu militia can learn Lingala and Swahili and blend into Congolese units with ease and never be detected. There was a propaganda war to vilify Congolese Tutsis and persecution to drive them from their homes. Today it is impossible for a Congolese Tutsi to live in Kinshasa, Lumumbashi or any of the major cities let alone in rural Eastern areas where death-squads kill them. True citizenship and protection has to be extended to all Congolese provided they are born there, regardless of ethnicity.


Nkunda is not the saviour of his people; some ethnic Tutsis apparently despise him. Maybe because they are war-weary, after years of fighting they just want to go back to living again. The Banyamulenge were given a share of power during the ceasefire but they were swiftly marginalised after the elections and this has spurred on the crisis. Kabila has staked his personal reputation on winning this battle and it looked to be going his way until recently. He has shunned a meeting with Condi Rice, The Pope, and the Africa-EU summit to oversee the elimination of Nkunda. Maybe he fears a military coup hence his reluctance to leave the country but for now he is popular particularly in the East though this could erode if he fails to deliver a decisive blow to his Arch-enemy. But like the FDLR have shown; a rebel group can hide in the mountains for a long-time and he could just lie in wait while playing hit and run. The government of Congo have to see the Hutu militias as a cause of its problems not the solution; then the Rwandan Government could mediate a cessation of hostilities with Nkunda. What I have realised that while Nkunda is the rebel you love to hate; to me he is the rebel I hate to love. The kind of guy you ask “What are you rebelling against?” he says “What you got?”