FINALLY OUR SPIN DOCTOR ADMITS THERE IS NO RWANDAN SUPPORT FOR M23

Waaaahhhhh, this is the biggest victory M23 has ever scored although unintentionally probably. The big mouth of all vultures in all matters rebel in Eastern DRC has acknowledged there is no Rwandan support for M23. For this once I applaud him, though he spins it immediately to affirm that as one of the reasons why the criminal coalition of FDLR-FARDC-FIB-MONUSCO has swept through the rebels previously held territories. The interesting thing about our cause is that it was born before us and does and will transcend us. And more so when it comes to these guys who became experts of the region dans le sillage de l'agenda sinistre français in the Great Lakes. They think they know everything because their livelyhood and professional identity comes, not from true knowledge, but from the distortion of it as the geo-politics post 1989 want it to be. I am in a hurry to attend a workshop outside the University but I must find time to elaborate more on this post. Hang on, the Kivu dynamics will not deceive us, and we move with the history on the move.

While I find time to put together the latest update, please read this summary. Almost everything is correct except two things:

1) The author fails to state that M23 forces are still intact and that General Makenga is using his time in thorough training. His resistance with the support of his people, wherever we are is the key to the problem at hand.

2) Taking the talks from Kampala to South Africa doesn't mean much. Do you remember how part of this huge mess originated from Sun City? Is that what Kabila is looking for? A Sun City bis? With oil in the Virunga in the plans of Zuma and his family? We can expect much, which only confirms further my point 1. So Makenga like Hannibal will make his the motto I have on my profile: "Aut iam inveniam, aut faciam", meaning "I will either find a way, or make one".

But the author is right about France and the UN getting nervous at the sight of a close and determined collaboration between Nairobi, Kampala and Kigali. Their ally, Tanzania is being increasingly isolated. Time will tell.

http://chimpreports.com/index.php/special-reports/13879-drc-museveni-calls-emergency-meet-as-regional-war-looms.html

DE L'AGENCE D'INFORMATION

Des plaines aux collines

Face aux manœuvres de Kinshasa, le M23 change de stratégie…

30/10/2013 Analyses

Appuyée par les forces des Nations Unies et par les FDLR, la nouvelle offensive loyaliste contre le M23 a failli mettre en danger les populations civiles. Pour ne pas porter la responsabilité de dérapages éventuels, le mouvement rebelle s’est replié dans les hauteurs, ce qui a fait crier à sa défaite imminente par Kinshasa et par la Monusco.

Supported by the United Nations forces and the FDLR, the new loyalist offensive against the M23 almost endangered civilians. To take no responsibility for any slippage, the rebel movement retreated in the hills, which provoked yelling at his imminent defeat by Kinshasa and Monusco.

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Le M23 est maintenant « quasiment militairement fini », déclarait hier, lundi 28 octobre, en vidéoconférence devant les membres du Conseil de Sécurité, l’allemand Martin Kobler, patron de la Mission de stabilisation des Nations Unies en République démocratique du Congo (Monusco). « Les rebelles du M23 ont quitté volontairement certaines positions », intitule aujourd’hui sa dépêche l’Agence France-Presse (AFP) – dont le ton est visiblement moins péremptoire –, avant de citer le dernier communiqué des “rebelles” qui annonce un retrait effectué pour ne pas être impliqué dans « un bain de sang dans les agglomérations où la population risquait d’être victime d’une violence susceptible d’être évitée ». Le M23 accuse la mission onusienne d’avoir infiltré et armé des civils dans le bourg de Kiwanja, tenu par la rébellion, dans le but de provoquer une riposte de cette dernière pour ensuite l’accuser de massacres contre les populations.

Les vendredi 25, en effet, les combats avaient repris entre les combattants du M23 et la coalition regroupant les forces de Kinshasa (FARDC), les anciens génocidaires hutus des FDLR et la Brigade offensive de la Monusco qui, à 4 heures du matin, avaient attaqué les lignes ennemies sur le front de Kibumba. Au troisième jour des affrontements, lorsque la situation tournait en faveur des troupes de l’Armée révolutionnaire congolaise (ARC, la branche militaire de la rébellion), des incidents se sont produits à Kiwanja, où les civils armés avec d’autres éléments portant les uniformes de la Brigade et des FARDC ont commencé à tirer sur les soldats et les policiers du M23. En même temps, des informations venant des services de renseignement de la rébellion faisaient état de la planification d’une attaque des hélicoptères du contingent sud-africain de la Brigade qui auraient dû investir la cité de Rumangabo. Dans cette cité, située à une cinquantaine de kilomètres à nord de Goma, le camp militaire du M23, une ancienne base des FARDC, n’est pas loin d’un village habité par des populations rwandophones, qui ont déjà fait les frais d’un bombardement de la coalition en juillet dernier.

En considérations de tous ces faits et suite à des concertations avec l’appareil politique du mouvement, le haut commandement militaire du M23 a décide de quitter toutes les plaines tenues par ses propres forces, et de se replier dans les hauteurs montagneuses. Les positions ainsi abandonnées auront vite été occupées par les forces onusiennes et celles de l’armée régulière, manœuvre préalable au lancement d’une vaste opération médiatique. La rébellion serait aux abois et la victoire de Kinshasa question de jours. Alexandre Luba Ntambo, ministre congolais de la Défense, appelle à la reddition les soldats de l’ARC, alors qu’on essaye d’expliquer cette inattendue « débâcle » du M23 par la puissance de feu de la Brigade et l’affaiblissement du prétendu soutien à la rébellion de la part du Rwanda. Ce dernier d’ailleurs, persiste dans la retenue face à plus d’une vingtaine de tirs de roquettes tombées sur son territoire depuis les positions des FARDC.

Un avertissement est cependant lancé du côté rebelle : le repli tactique ne doit pas être interprété comme un signe de faiblesse, mais comme un changement de stratégie. Selon une source proche de la rébellion en Europe,« pendant trop longtemps, le M23 a fait preuve de modération en acceptant de négocier alors que les hommes aux ordres de Ladsous [le patron français du DOMP, en anglais DKPO, Département des Opération de maintien de la Paix des Nations unies, ndr] et de Kobler tiraient sur les troupes de l’ARC ». Il s’agirait maintenant de « tourner la page » de cette stratégie “défensive”, le repli permettant de se mettre dans « une position, plus “offensive” ». « Toutes les neuf Brigades du M23 sont dans les hauteurs, avec leurs forces intactes au niveau des hommes et du matériel. »

Il est évident que l’hypothèse d’un affaiblissement, voire d’une déliquescence progressive de la rébellion est à prendre avec une réserve extrême. Autrement, on ne comprendrait pas pour quelle raison Paris et Washington, depuis toujours soutiens majeurs du président Kabila, ont appelé à une reprise immédiate des pourparlers entre le gouvernement de Kinshasa et le M23. Ceux-ci se déroulent à Kampala sous l’égide de la Conférence internationale de la région des Grands Lacs (CIRGL). Cette nouvelle session du dialogue, démarrée en septembre, fait partie d’un processus complexe qui n’est pas trop du goût des puissances occidentales, certainement plus enthousiastes face à l’éventualité d’une solution militaire et rapide de la crise dans l’Est de la RDC. Ce qui ne semble pourtant pas être l’avis de l’envoyé spécial du président américain dans les Grands Lacs, Russel Feingold. De passage à Paris, celui-ci s’est prononcé pour l’arrêt des combats : « Il y a d’énormes risques à continuer comme ça, en pensant que la solution militaire est l’unique réponse. Cela risque d’attirer d’autres forces et pourrait conduire à une guerre croisée. »

Néanmoins, si le spectre d’une intervention de Kigali pour faire taire les armes lourdes qui, du côté congolais de la frontière, font des victimes parmi ses populations civiles (et cela sans que la Monusco bronche…), fait peur aux acteurs le plus responsables de la crise, l’internationalisation du conflit, avec des conséquences de déstabilisation de toute la sous-région, fait toujours partie de l’agenda des forces occultes qui opèrent notamment au sein du DOMP.

A Kampala, où la délégation du M23 est de plus en plus sceptique sur la volonté gouvernementale de vouloir reprendre d’une manière constructive les négociations de paix, un colonel de la rébellion ironises face aux rumeurs d’une débandade de son mouvement lors des derniers combats et répond en citant Sun Tzi, la maître chinois de la pensée militaire : « Ne répétez pas les mêmes tactiques victorieuses, mais adaptez-vous aux circonstances chaque fois particulières. »

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PALUKU, KOBLER AND KABILA CLAIMING VICTORY A LITTLE EARLY

I should have added Jacob Zuma because he said it yesterday, a little louder than anyone else. In the DRC to check on his mining returns and probably his nephew's deals around oil exploitation in the Virunga National park, he was speaking of FARDC achievements in the Kivu while killings are happening in Lubumbashi. But at the moment I will not focus on Lubumbashi. I just want to remind Paluku, I can't do the same with Kobler because he's justed landed, heavy highhandedly though... I just want to remind Paluku how he run from Goma in November last year. I want him to rethink exactly how many men came down from Runyone and routed 800 FARDC chasing them all the way into Uganda. He should remember that the same strategists who are withdrawing from towns, primarily to avoid a war of FDLR-FIB-FARDC against civilians, are still running the military operations of the rebels. He also should know that, while the coalition FARDC-FIB/MONUSCO is still working with FDLR and that's what makes him and his boss feel invincible. The rebels know all too well how any civilian casualties will be quickly and squarely blamed on them. We've been going for a few months without  UN Experts reports incriminating rebels and neighboring countries, and that's what Ladsous men are looking for. We only had that Enough Project bla, bla, bla...

If Julien Paluku has memory, he should surely remember that the 400 men that marched all the way from Bunagana to Goma are the same ones giving way to Mamadou. The speed of things should invite caution, rather than early victory drums. You can't beat drums when you did not fight. 

Now let's try understand what is going on now. From the point of view of vultures, Ladsous and his Kobler have not changed, neither their objective, nor their lies. Speaking of Ladsous objective, it's the support for the corrupt regime in Kinshasa with whose benediction he can use FDLR to achieve the long time dream of France for the Great Lakes, a total war. M23 and before it CNDP -I tend to think that I really prefer Nkunda's CNDP- have proven to be a thorn in the foot for Ladsous. With the cause they defend, he cannot succeed, hence the whole implication of the UN forces into criminal and very soon to be, genocide activities, under the glare of the entire world. I mean, the entire world prefers to be obsessed with M23 and invest hugely into eradicating it, simply because it does two serious things: first its daring to challenge the corrupt neglect of the successive ruling classes of the DRC over the destiny and the place of Eastern DRC under the sun; secondly its no less daring determination to fight the genocide forces that have disfigured the country and particularly the Kivu. Now,  by daring to engage into these two points, CNDP and now M23 have exposed the extent of corruption of the international community that support the two fundamental ills destroying the Kivu and soon would destroy the Great Lakes.

If you have this in mind, you understand the impossibility for Kabila, Kobler, Paluku, Zuma, Feingold, Power etc... to grasp the move M23 is taking by withdrawing from all these towns. You can also understand why they'd be so quick to declare victory. But the real reason they are declaring victory so fast is the fact that they know the international community's commitment to the corrupt regime in Kinshasa and the protection they are always ready to give to FDLR. Can you now begin to see why New Vision was so quick to publish the now flopped scoop of Bertrand Bisimwa alleged arrest by Uganda security? They are just too happy to re-edit the January 2009 scoop by the then chief of staff of a neighboring army. That is what the media working for Kabila and Ladsous via Kobler are very quick to publicize. Actually a journalist has just asked me why a state media in Uganda should be the first to publish a hoax, he wasn't convinced by the fact that it is the Ugandan Army itself that denounced it as a hoax. Waow, the cause of my people has so many and powerful enemies, but that has never been a reason for us to abandon it or start acting cowards. The cowards end the way of the guys who tried to sow they division that saw a number of them arrested in the neighboring country. The rest will continue defending this cause to the last drop of blood of the last man or woman.

I hear that the US administration, after championing Kobler gangsterism, now is toning down its vitriol rhetoric against M23 and calling all the parties back to Kampala. They should be calling Kabila, he's the one who is forever leaving Kampala. It seems that they don't want anyone to loose. But why do you unleash a war if you don't want anyone to loose? Whether you manipulate the talks or not, for a government army and Ladsous army to fail to overcome M23 as they did CNDP is in itself a defeat. A defeat reminiscent of the international defeat together with the genocide forces in 1994. This new model of colonialism will be also defeated in due course, my people need tons of patience.

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY'S MESS IN KAMPALA

I waited long enough to see in which direction the International Community was going to mislead everyone in the Kampala talks. Now I can confirm as we knew all along that they did not want to take any direction. And more, they only want to keep the Kinshasa status quo going on. No doubt about that. On the surface, they are just spending money on their many trips and hotel business in Kampala. Underneath the surface, they, like Joseph Kabila, want to perpetuate the war in the Kivu. They, like Kabila, want to tranform the DRC, from the Kivu, into a chaotic mess like Somalia. They are aware M23 is the last obstacle they need to overcome in order to complete their sinister job. Some of you might find my view quite radical, but in reality, it has not changed. The proof of what I am saying is cast in the only thing Kabila and his International Community are working for. We know the only thing they'd like to see M23 sign is:

1) Desarm and reintegrate FARDC

2) Transform into a political party

And these, my dear readers are just two impossibilities. It is out of question for M23 to disarm, and even more so out of question for M23 to reintegrate FARDC. We've been there, done that as the popular saying goes. It is absolutely out of question for M23 to transform into a political party, sorry delegate Kambasu Ngeve. If you think that's a possibility you have not learnt the lessons of 2009. But I believe you are being forced by that so called international community to say that! I have thousands of reasons why M23 cannot and should not reintegrate FARDC. The brassage and mixage should be enough reasons not to try that again. But more importantly, no one from Kivu should integrate an army working with FDLR since 1994 to destroy the Kivu so systematically. The United Nations should understand that, while as an international body they have soiled their hands with our people's blood by working side by side with genocidaires in Rwanda, and then with their new version in the DRC, no son or daughter of the Kivu should ever do the same. Let Kabila's FARDC and the UN brigade do that, but do not use your phony and failed diplomacy to claim M23 should do the same.

Since 1959, political parties have brought some kind of curse on the political landscape of the DRC. As someone who studies politics, I should say that they are only machines of power used to seize it and then keep it at all cost, even in the so called modern democracies. They are never tools to develop the people. As manipulation tools, they are highly and thoroughly corrupt and corruptible. If you have any doubt on this, just go back and study how Kabila ended up assembling the famous Majorité Présidentielle. And again check the record to see whether this has taken the country in any development direction. It has instead created a blotted parliament with what the Congolese sense of humour calls des parlementaires budgetivores et per-diemistes. You need to create fat political parties and if you must swallow all the small ones to fatten yours even more, then you do it. Isn't Mwangachuchu still a CNDP member of the Kin political class? Has the transformation of the CNDP into a political party in 2009 accomplished anything at all?

While the Kin delegation like a capricious child slammed the negociations in Kampala, the so  called international community took over, "unofficially" they'd tell you, to try a force M23 into the absurd alternative above. No word about declaring the Kivu a disaster zone, because it does not please Kabila. Yet it is a disaster zone, though other parts of the country can claim more or less the same. In my opinion, this should be the only point on the agenda, but not with that name of a disaster zone: it should be an Urgent Funding Recostruction Zone. The conditions for dealing with it should come in this order: 1) Let M23 clear FDLR (not by FARDC or the MONUSCO-FIB because of their involvement with FDLR); 2) Resettlement of IDPs and refugees (because you need hard working people for the reconstruction); 3) Streamline and Phase out NGOs using a clear reconstruction agenda; 4) Heavy infrastructure funding involving roads, agriculture & livestock; education, health, water and sanitation; 5) Investment opportunities within a regional framwork towards the EAC, once FDLR have been uprooted.

So why is the international community being obstinate like the capricious Kabila? Very simple answer: they want like him to resort to the military option. They've wanted this all along. The stalemate in Kampala, the inclusion of Russell Feingold as the US representative in this whole thing, the Lasdsous agenda within the UN etc. are all tactics to drive to the war. I believe M23 knows this and would not be surprised that this is where all this is leading. The West's determination to militarize everything isn't even about peace, it's about the market for their arms industry and their thirst to create chaos everywhere. The recent history of geo-politics is plagued with this sinister agenda. So my friends do not expect much from Kampala. I am surprised at the M23 delegation patience in showing they really want to give a chance to peace, but no one else is interested in that as you can see.

CHINESE LEARNT HOW TO CORRUPT DRC GVT FROM THE WEST

http://thinkafricapress.com/drc/corruption-congo-how-china-learnt-west

Last January I was in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to research Sicomines, China's controversial $6.5 billion megadeal in which Chinese companies will construct roads, schools and hospitals in exchange for mining and untold billions of dollars worth of copper and cobalt with Congo's state mining agency.

On a sunny morning in the south-eastern mining city of Lubumbashi, I called a Congolese official to pose some hard questions about the deal - particularly, what happened to the $350 million 'signing bonus' that was handed over by the Chinese. But I hardly got a word in before his response betrayed his fear as to the more sensitive concern on his mind: "Is this about COMIDE?"

It wasn't, of course. But perhaps it should have been, because the corruption scandal that burns hottest among Congolese officials today has nothing to do with the Chinese. In 2009, the International Monetary Fund started a $551 million loan to improve the DRC's business climate through a series of projects. As a condition of the loan, Congo's government would have to make all its mining contracts and transactions public.

So it must have come as a surprise to the IMF when Bloomberg revealed the DRC had sold its 25% stake in a copper mining venture called COMIDE SPRL - a trade the Congolese government hadn't disclosed. The IMF responded to the news by refusing to renew the loan, meaning the DRC will essentially forfeit an incredible $225 million because a few Congolese officials didn't want the world to know what they were up to.

Learning from the masters When Westerners try to explain China's rapid rise in Africa, they often assume that it comes through corruption, secret deals and manipulation. But there is nothing Chinese about COMIDE. Its parent company, Straker International Corp., is based offshore in the British Virgin Islands, and it is primarily owned by the multinational Eurasian Natural Resource Company, headquartered in London and traded on the Kazakhstan stock exchange.

Certainly the circumstances surrounding the Chinese Sicomines deal merit concern too. The DRC's government doesn't seem to have conducted any study that estimates the potential value of the minerals buried at the Sicomines site, meaning no-one can predict the eventual profits and what's truly at stake for the Chinese companies, the Congolese mining company and the Congolese government.

What's more, a 2011 study by the accountability NGO Global Witness reported that $24 million of that signing bonus was mysteriously diverted into an offshore account in the British Virgin Islands by Sicomines' Congolese partners. Even in the DRC's multibillion-dollar mining sector, $24 million is a lot of money to go unaccounted.

But does this then set China's Congolese ambitions apart from the West's? Is the $6.5 billion Sicomines deal in fact unprecedented in its lack of transparency and its potential to make its CEOs rich while the Congolese people remain poor?

To single out the Chinese companies as uniquely responsible for entering into shady business in the DRC is to miss a fundamental point: If the Chinese have learned how to leverage power over the Congolese government, they owe the lesson to the rogue businessmen from Western countries that preceded them. .

Two centuries ago it was the Belgians who colonised the Congo, first for its ivory, a trade which would eventually die out along with most of the wild elephants that supplied it. After ivory, it was rubber, transported by Belgian-constructed railroads whose tracks remain embedded in the ground, relics of Congo's resource-driven history. Then, to build the atomic bombs it would drop on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the United States sourced its uranium from a mine just 100 km southeast of Kolwezi in south-eastern DRC.

Companies from Canada, the UK, South Africa and elsewhere began operating industrial mines. They extracted billions of dollars worth of copper, cobalt, and other minerals. Today, Congo's mining sector generates 28% of the country's GDP and is the primary source of income for 16% of the population, according to the World Bank.

In theory, the country should be rich from its vast mineral wealth. But you wouldn't know it by looking at how most Congolese live. Rural families sleep in huts that flood when it rains. Only 4% have electricity.

Western nations such as the United States tend to claim they have tried to solve the DRC's problems. But the record shows that for at least the first 30 years following the Congo's independence they did the opposite, entrenching one of Africa's most corrupt and violent dictators by supplying him with billons of dollars in aid, weapons and bribes. Mobutu Sese Seko killed his adversaries with impunity and commandeered as much as 40% of Congo's wealth (between 4 and 8 billion dollars) during his 31-year rule.

In the years since Mobutu's rein, foreign mining companies have garnered blame for manipulating Congo out of its natural wealth. On at least five occasions in 2009 and 2010, Congo's state-owned mining companies sold their stakes in mines to offshore companies that immediately re-sold the same stakes for up to five times the price. "Between 2010 and 2012, the DRC lost at least US$1.36 billion in revenues from the underpricing of mining assets that were sold to offshore companies", claimed a report released earlier this year by an international panel chaired by Kofi Annan.

Looking East All the while, Congolese eyes are turning toward China in the hopes that the Chinese may usher in prosperity where patrons before it have not. The fact that China succeeded in moving 600 million people out of poverty over the past 35 years is a source of admiration for some Congolese who remain entrenched in it themselves. Many see China as much more welcoming than the US. Twice a week, a line forms outside the Chinese embassy in Kinshasa as Congolese students and businessmen arrive to apply for visas to work or study in China. They say it's far easier to get a visa there than to the US.

China's government has consistently reinforced the sentiment that it is eager to help the Congolese people flourish. In his very first trip abroad as China's leader, Xi Jinping travelled in March 2013 to Tanzania, South Africa and Congo-Brazzaville, where he promised $20 billion in loans for aid to Africa over the next three years. In June, US President Barack Obama followed in the Chinese leader's footsteps in what was only Obama's first extended trip to Africa since taking office some four and a half years ago.

The metaphor of America's lagging commitment to the continent is not lost upon Africans themselves. In a 2009 survey of 250 people in nine African countries, three-quarters said the Chinese way was a 'very positive' or 'somewhat positive' model of development. When asked which model offers more promise for Africa's future, the Western or the Chinese one, they overwhelmingly chose the latter.

Chinese investment may not, in fact, radically alter the future of one of the world's most underdeveloped nations. Unless the DRC's government collects its fair share from the Sicomines deal and somehow uses that wealth to benefit Congolese society in a way it never has before, China may simply become the latest benefactor in Congo's long history as a country rich in resources whose neediest citizens will never benefit from them.

But it's hard to blame the Congolese for hoping China will succeed where the West has failed.

In an office overlooking Kinshasa's grand Boulevard 30 Jeune, newly repaved and widened by the Chinese under Sicomines, stands Mack Dumba, Congo director of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which works to improve accountability in the global mining sector. "Why don't Americans build roads like this anymore?" Dumba asks. "Why don't the Belgians, that colonised, build roads like this? The Chinese are doing things that no one else will."