OF TERRORISM AND TERRORISTS

The great friend of Joseph Kabila, a.k.a Colette Braeckman, in a bid to force a greater US involvement in the war against M23, has just told the world that she suspects Al Shabab members close to M23, immediately after affirming the same thing of ADF-NALU. Like all of us, she knows that wherever or whenever Al Shabab is mentionned, Obama Boys already on the ground under the disguise of  the new found career of international public servants meaning ordinary NGO employees, who also happen to play spies, start agitating for american weapons to slaughter innocent populations. I have no issues with Braeckman trying to bring american soldiers to the Western side of the Rift Valley. I have a big problem with her when she wants to equate M23 to ADF-NALU.

It is such a bad joke to bring the Al Shabab discourse to Kivu. But it is even worse to try equating M23 to ADF-NALU. That is the same thing Jakaya Kikwete did when in June he suggested that Uganda negotiates with this group and Rwanda does the same with FDLR. Braeckman's choice to be one of Kabila's  failed governance defender is her right, in a world where journalism is mostly opportunistic, in search of money and power rather than interest in the truth. However, deep down, she might never acknowledge it, but she knows very well that M23 is not just another militia. It is a movement fighting in the name of a province whose rights have been denied for so long; a province whose fair share and participation in the public life of the country has been trampled upon for so long; a province for which even daily, ordinary life has been made a real nightmare by the absence of the state, the violence of rwandan génocidaires, the gigantic greed of foreign corporations and local "nouveaux riches", the neo-colonial NGO system, the UN "gangrène" and the FARDC brutality coupled with its unstoppable weakness. The force of M23 is that it makes these claims with historical facts, political and moral responsibility. That is why it is so difficult for Kabila to sit and discuss these claims. He has nothing to say because of the truth they carry. 

And that is the same reason why Kikwete's remarks in June sounded so silly apart from being quite ignorant and aberrant. And that is why South African, Tanzanian and Malawian move to put together a UN brigade to fight M23 is bound to fail. The apparent calm on the ground today is only a telling sign. The UN brigade tested, using FARDC and FDLR, to see how M23 would respond. The response surprisingly was Monusco's. The situation should lead people like Braeckman to just keep quiet and wait until they have something really serious to say. She could have told us, for example, what else South Africa is doing beside sending its troupes to Brazil to train its military forces on how fight in the Amazonian jungles (http://nanojv.wordpress.com/2013/07/13/afrique-du-sud-bresil-cooperation-militaire/). Is this why the members of the Brigade have pushed their position from Sake towards Bweramana? To wait for the SANDF units trained in the Amazonian forest to be back and face it off with M23 on the same footing? Doubtful. Since when did the brave people of South Africa who fought the oppressive Apartheid, decide to use their advanced development to embrace the Western imperialism and impose it on black people? On aura tout vu!