In his Foreign Affairs article, "The Forgotten War in Congo," Jason K. Stearns, a self-proclaimed expert on regional affairs, berates the international community for neglecting the war in the east of the country.
However, a closer reading of the entire piece reveals that it is precisely this international ignorance that enables agenda-driven individuals and academics, like the author, to exploit knowledge gaps to promote their own biased narratives.
People familiar with the region's history and politics would find it disturbing that Stearns dismisses the FDLR--a Kinshasa-backed genocidal group responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda--as a "spent force." This language aligns with the rhetoric often used by Congolese officials at the UN Security Council, seemingly to justify DR Congo's reluctance to sever its well-documented ties with FDLR.
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It is inconceivable for anyone with even a basic understanding of genocide as a crime against humanity to attempt to find moral equivalence, rationalize, let alone justify, collaboration with a genocidal group, regardless of its size or perceived strength. If anything, the alleged "spent force" should be easy to dismantle.
The fact remains that the United Nations and several other humanitarian organizations have singled out FDLR as one of the largest, richest, and most well-organized foreign armed militia groups operating on the territory of DR Congo. But Stearns downplays the threat posed by FDLR in order to make the startling assertion that Rwanda shares the blame in the ongoing persecution of the Congolese Tutsi by local authorities.
A UN technical mission confirmed that DR Congo exhibits all the indicators and triggers for atrocity crimes as outlined in the UN Framework of Analysis including; hate speech, the politicization of identity, the proliferation of militias, and widespread and systematic attacks--including sexual violence--specifically targeting Congolese Tutsi. There are well over 100,000 Congolese refugees in Rwanda to attest to these facts.
In a recent visit to Kigali, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, the Under-Secretary-General and UN Secretary-General's Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, went to the Nkamira transit center in Rwanda that hosts Congolese refugees fleeing this violence. "The harrowing stories I heard of identity-based attacks, brutal killings, tortures, rapes, I am carrying with me...we must urge action for peace & safety, and their return home," she said in a tweet.
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By omitting these critical facts, Stearns and others like him mislead their readers. They deliberately omit the necessary context to help readers understand the complexities surrounding M23, a Congolese rebel group, which emerged as a response to the Congolese government's persecution of its own citizens and leaving an entire territory vulnerable to warlords of more than 250 armed militias, including the ISIS-linked ADF militia from Uganda. Additionally, they overlook the Kinshasa-backed FDLR's genocidal ideology and its ongoing attempts to seize power in Rwanda.
While Stearns calls for sanctions against Rwanda, he does not deem it necessary for the international community to hold the Congolese government accountable for its divisive politics, high level of insecurity, state failure, and corruption that has politicians and military leaders colluding with armed groups to trade illegally in their country's mineral wealth.
Furthermore, he neglects to call for sanctions against DR Congo for undermining the Nairobi Process--intended to disarm and reintegrate armed militias--by instead recruiting, training, and arming those same militias under the "Wazalendo" banner to fight the M23. As a direct consequence, Congolese security forces and their allied armed groups are responsible for the majority of the human rights violations in the east of the country as documented by the 2023 United Nations Joint Human Rights Office (UNJHRO) report. The solutions Stearns proposes will not bring peace to DR Congo because they seek to externalize the problem.
No one who follows the conflict in eastern DR Congo can be indifferent to the sheer scale of human suffering that exists there, much less Rwandans who more than most, know what it's like for a country to disintegrate because the government has chosen to abdicate its responsibility to protect citizens. Stearns acknowledges that Congolese leader Félix Tshisekedi has threatened to wage war on Rwanda to overthrow the leadership, exploited the war to score political points in an election year, and amassed an impressive array of mercenaries and militias at Rwanda's border.
But for him, none of these threats warrant a defensive posture from Kigali. Instead, he makes excuses for Tshisekedi's "destabilizing rhetoric," putting it to a fear of internal coups. Stearns' logic is flawed: a weak leader, as he suggests Tshisekedi is, is not incapable of following through on his threats to maintain power. Stearns essentially wants Rwanda and the international community to gamble with the lives of Rwandans. No country in the world can, nor should, be expected to treat such a threat lightly.
Most importantly, the accusations Stearns makes are antithetical to Rwanda's conflict management ethos. At the heart of Rwanda's military deployments is a resolute commitment to protect endangered civilians--an aspect mandated by the Constitution. Wherever they are deployed, Rwandan security forces have earned confidence in the local populations they serve because of their disciplined and humane conduct. The evidence in this regard is indisputable.
Stearns says that Western governments are reluctant to sanction Rwanda because Kigali has become an important geopolitical partner. The author's overview of African state-to-state relations seems to be a zero-sum game. Articles like his rarely, if ever, acknowledge the fact that Rwandan troops were deployed in these places primarily to halt atrocity crimes and the ensuing humanitarian crises. It is as though the jihadist groups were beheading gas reserves and kidnapping pipelines instead of the thousands of innocent residents of Mozambique's Cabo Delgado Province.
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Rwanda's security approach underscores a broader strategy rooted in cooperation, security, and respect for human rights. Therefore, given that Rwanda has registered broad success in equally complex spheres like Mozambique and CAR, why would it deviate from this established pattern in DR Congo when it is geographically closer and the stakes are higher?
The fact that Stearns seems to take offense to Rwanda's various sports partnerships and bilateral military arrangements is neither surprising nor novel. There are many who are still struggling to accept that African states are increasingly taking agency over their affairs.
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What makes Stearns's arguments dangerous is that they are misguided at best and malicious at worst. Infact, his own 2017 database 'Kivu Security Tracker' on which he partnered with Human Rights Watch to track events in eastern DR Congo was closed in 2023 for serious violation of research ethics.
Rwanda is not responsible for the genocidal rhetoric and proliferation of armed groups and small arms in eastern DR Congo; that rests squarely on the Congolese government. As long as Congolese politicians choose this path, the region will experience insecurity. And as long as we have academics and politicians who excuse this behavior, a peaceful solution to this conflict will continue to elude us.
The author is a political commentator.
