When the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI) of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) confirmed Joseph Kabila as winner of the presidential election of 28 November 2011, the West proved reluctant to accept the election results. But scarcely a year later, the West is intent to turn the page on the matter and return to “business as usual” with Kabila’s reformed government—but at what cost?
For the past 14 years, more than six million Congolese have perished in the ongoing conflict triggered by U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda when they invaded Congo in 1996. As the world focuses on the Western intervention in Libya under the guise of moral responsibility to protect the vulnerable, the global community must question the lack of action by the United States and the coalition on the millions dead in the Congo.
The Rising Continent assesses the performance of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and UN peacekeepers’ forces in DR Congo (MONUSCO), and concludes that both failed to live up to their mandate: ‘[In] November 2010 it will be sixteen years that ICTR will have been put in place. The budget spent on its operations will be almost 1.5 billion $ by the end of 2010. The Tribunal has so far investigated and sentenced only one side to the Rwandan genocide…
Sudanese girls seen in Darfur, Sudan, June 25, 2005. The 12-year-old girl wearing the striped scarf, front, reported how she was separated from her two friends, and raped by soldiers from the Sudanese government. Photo by R. Haviv
Someone very important is visiting Africa, specifically five countries including Tanzania, Rwanda, Benin, Ghana, and Liberia. He is the president of the United States of America. The hassles of hosting a U.S. president are bad enough. His people take over your whole country and make our normally inefficient states go into overdrive and our egregious first ladies and their husbands go into overkill to show their hospitality. We never knew many of them could bend their knees until they were leading cleaning troops across the capitals in preparation for Clinton’s visit in 1998 from Kampala to Accra!
A common flaw in U.S. foreign policy is the politicization of foreign assistance. Whether Republican or Democratic, U.S. administrations allow narrowly defined “national interests” – instead of needs, priorities, and realities in a given country – to dictate foreign assistance. As a result, foreign aid often backfires, undermining long-term U.S. interests and fueling instability, conflict, and violations of core human rights standards. Nowhere is this truer than in Central Africa’s Great Lakes Region. Today, President George W. Bush supports corrupt, illegitimate regimes that will either cooperate in the Global War on Terror, provide U.S. companies access to vital natural resources, or both. If history is any indication, this infusion of wealth and military training is likely to be disastrous for the people of Africa.