Félix Tshisekedi Upbeat and Positive, Downbeat Kagame Mourns

Si vis pacem, para bellum (he who wants peace, prepares for war)! Often and supposedly criticized for his soft approach in his country management skills, His Excellency Mr Félix Tshisekedi Tshilombo has proved his critics wrong along the way. Kagame’s Rwanda will no longer face an indolent and coward Fatshi Béton, given the military prowess experienced on the Rusthuru – Rumangabo – Mbuzi – Tshanzu – Runyonyi – Goma peripheral neighbourhood axis lately. For the first time, Fatshi’s words that  Rwandans and Kagame usually took for sleet have become blows after blows on Rwanda face with the latest warring credentials. Fatshi will no longer be treated as a toothless feline.

Invited by his peers, the President of the Republic, Félix Tshisekedi did not attend the opening of the extraordinary summit of the African Union, on May 25,  in Malabo- Equatorial Guinea. The resurgence of armed hostilities initiated by M23 rebels was deemed priority by the President of the Republic, resulting in his diary being reshuffled. M23 rebel movement assault was expected, with ranks beefed up by Rwandan army officials and military. Faced with such a situation, which also caught the full attention of the President, the latter could not afford to be absent as long as there was danger in delay. He himself coordinated FARDC’s responses by assuming special command of the troops at the war front line. M23 rebellion launched their strikes against the positions of DRC loyal forces from May 24 to 25, 2022, with immediate response from the Congolese military side. Both military and political authorities in the DRC were aware of the impending attack. Intelligence reports as well as information gathered on the ground and in Goma inexorably corroborated for a major attack. In order to camouflage their involvement as a rear base for M23 insurgents, Rwanda believed that the Congolese is still duped as always. Rwanda’s Armies General Staff hierarchy made the world believe that the FARDC would have shelled two counties in the heart of Rwanda. But the truth quickly caught up with them. It was necessary to simmer the premises of a war by pompously and digging propagating these false imprudence, to justify the entry into Congolese territory by Rwandan forces. Deception is an inversely crippling vice.

Gone are the fraternal coaxing manners that President Félix alluded to whenever he met Kagame “His Brother” Kagame believed in Fatshi’s supposed naivety when he called him that. He forgot that the stealth of the Leopard is a virtue to ensure its survival, and Félix is ​​one of them, more than an Amavubi-Wasp: the Rwanda totem. Lip movements as well as words that are spewed, are compliant with a certain line of thought, in politics unfortunately. Although he was absent, Kagamae failed to take heed to the speech by the President of the Republic in Nairobi, during the official entry of the DRC into the EAC-East African Community. The President did not flinch to draw the parallelism between the peace that reigns among the countries across the Atlantic, and those beyond the Mediterranean, whereby they do not call themselves brothers, yet those who call themselves brothers do by deceit and in bad faith to attacking and harm each other.

Fatshi rising to power has positively changed the situation in the belligerent approach to the East, with Rwanda which, each time, wants the DRC to be its baby doll. This is without counting with Fatshi Béton whose “de Père et de Mêre” roots are jealously and sacredly buried in the upper and lower layers of the earth. The straw that always spills the vase remains the reintegration of the M23 insurgents. Formerly, the late Delphin Kayimbi (he is really dead) represented the Congolese government of yesteryear in negotiations with M23, and a Roadmap had been drafted, signed and adopted, ratifying the Rwandan desiderata 11 years ago. This roadmap requires the DRC to reintegrate M23 insurgents into all entities and all administrative bodies of the Republic; in the Government, in the Army and within the Intelligence Services. Even a spider would never have wished to offer shelter in its web to enemies or predators, why would the DRC do it to accommodate harmful forces that are fulfilling Rwanda’s agenda to exploit and destroy the DRC? This Rodamap become a bottleneck for the DRC, and it is believed that it had had favourable feedbacks within the Congolese administration so that the President shall proceed with its implementation. Large sums of money were supposedly been planned  to facilitate such an  operation. This initiative has been levied as grievance filed against the former Special Advisor “Fantomas” François Beya. When the Congolese gangrene his own future and that of generations to come!

Infiltration maneuvers by the Rwandan army were recorded and documented by local residents. Rwandan soldiers carry out disguise, among many other camouflage techniques to enter into the DRC incognito; they get rid of the Rwandan army uniform with the Rwandan flag embedded on the left arm, for the DRC army’s once on Congolese Eastern side soil. They failed to get away unnoticed by the natives whose watchful eye thwarted their hiding acumen. Congolese residents played a major role in so doing, hiding in makeshift huts to carry out such perilous actions. The population ended   up responding to Mzee Laurent Kabila when he once said: “If we don’t fight, we will become slaves of the Tutsis and Kagame”. Kagame’s dream is to take hold, through M23 rebellion supported by his army, an important city in eastern DRC and force the Congolese government to negotiate; whereas Kagame does not receive injunctions from whomever for the reintegration of the FDLR into the Rwandan army, even though they are Rwandans too. FARDC hierarchy were well informed of “dilatory” maneuvers and the Rwandan army’s boots noise, which prompted them to deploy the bulk of the military equipment towards Rutshuru with extra force, and doubling the number of the military, even in Goma.

Such vigilante campaigns are made possible thanks to the state of siege that many are calling for its end; and Fatshi by no means wants the state of siege to be lifted, at least in the current circumstances. As long as situations that called for its implementation do not justify its lifting, it (state of siege) shall be enforceable. Obviously, this stance doesn’t not sit well with hateful political agitators in the DRC, who have never been in support of any actions carried out by the supreme commander.  Unfortunately for this fringe of pseudo political actors are there for a long haul, the willful determination shown by “El Commandante” is stronger than the destabilizations which he is subject to on daily basis.

Heavy fighting and blasts by  FARDC  towards Rwandan military backed up M23 insurgents positions, have resulted in bitterness, as well as numerous losses in equipment and human lives in their ranks, the Rwandans and M23 fled towards the Virunga Park; Rutshuru is now liberated and free! But the damage bear testimony to the ruthless belligerent relentlessness on this famous Rusthuru – Rumangabo – Mbuzi – Tshanzu – Runyonyi – Goma  neighbourhood route. FARDC unleashed firepower was of undeniably destructive ferocity; and it managed to throw them off. The dead among the Rwandan army and M23 were piling up like bags of coltan that they stole to run their economy; which justifies the cascading mourning in Rwanda. The land of a Thousand Hills has become that of Thousands of Mourning Vigils!

In the aftermath of M23 insurgents’ demise, the military arsenal abandoned and recovered following skirmishes on this neighbourly axis clearly demonstrates the involvement of the Rwandan army. Trucks equipped with artillery systems, self-propelled guns, Caesar guns, ammunition and other equipment may never be acquired by M23 rebels. Armament found is abundant and heavily installed to be the prerogative of a single rebel group. M23 rebels are less well organized to have deep pockets with financial muscles to acquire such expensive military equipment. There is no doubt that Kagame is the architect of this pseudo armed group. Handgun ammunition, arranged in ascending order of caliber, inch and metric, shells, as well as bullets of various calibers and types, are necessarily sufficient evidence to prove the presumptuous involvement of the Rwandan army and administrative authorities.

After the initial questioning, some senior Rwandan army officers captured and held captive by the Congolese army during heavy fighting,  are on their way to Kinshasa. It is here that it becomes savvy to condemn the untimely communiqué by the Government Spokesperson, Patrick Muyaya. As the Corsicans are remindful  with their proverb: “To forgive is for a Christian, to forget is for a fool”, it is important to make the distinction between forgiveness and forgetting . If the DRC will therefore easily accept to grant “mercy to all sin by Rwanda”, the DRC people will always remember Rwanda and hold them liable for having killed civilians and plundered the DRC for more than 20 years. History cannot be fooled twice. And with a smile too! Congratulations to the Congolese authorities for suspending RwandAir flights into DRC. A press release by the Minister of Communication was followed by a twitter, condemning speech made by the Inspector General of Police in Goma. The Inspector asked the entire population to equip themselves even with bladed weapons to defend the integrity of Goma and the country in the face of the warlike hurricane that Rwanda is imposing on the DRC. The Inspector’s remarks, which Muyaya condemns, cannot be construed as hatred, but self-defense call to comply with the wish dear to Mzee, calling on the Congolese to take care of themselves. Is Muyaya not surprised that his release met wishes by Bertrand Bisimwa from M23 rebels’ movement, who echoed in the same line as his (Muyaya) narratives? Contrary to popular belief that genius is innate, talent is tamed through effort. Nothing comes easy. Therefore, it is forbidden for the DRC and the Congolese people to rest on their laurels in the hope of achieving peace with their immediate neighbours, especially little Rwanda, a country as big as the size of its wasp. Or as the ancestors said, “Fame is not won on a bed of feathers” literally.