operations in Rwanda)
***
It seems to me to be not even worthwhile to respond to the wild
imaginings on the Congo produced by callous buckrakers of the ilk of
Tony Blair.
But you can't just sit idle and leave unanswered the kind of crap
passing for analysis that Blair co-wrote with Howard G. Buffet titled
"Stand with Rwanda: Now is no time to cut aid to Kigali" published on
Foreign Policy on February 21, 2013.
By the way, Foreign Policy is turning into a redoubt where enemies of
the Congolese people feel comfortable enough to spew their anti-Congo
venom.
In March 2008, it was on Foreign Policy that two
mercenaries-scholars--Jeffrey Herbst and Greg Mills--working as
lobbyists for Rwandan president Paul Kagame--published their infamous
essay purporting to demonstrate that Congo, as we know it, doesn't
actually exist.
At the time, though about more than a year later, I also wrote on this
very blog a rebuke to that preposterous notion.
Reading the essay penned by Blair and Buffet, I'm amazed at the way
the pair rehearses Herbst and Mills's argument.
Once again, in Blair and Buffet's paper, Congolese citizens have all
but disappeared. But what I find in it more troubling is that, in
their attempt at defending Kagame, they've completely erased Rwandan
citizens as well.
For instance, nowhere in that piece is there any mention of the
systematic intimidation and assassination campaign being waged by
Kagame against Rwandan opposition leaders.
Well, it's true that Blair and Buffet clearly wrote their piece for
the sole purpose of undoing international pressure on Rwanda that took
the form of withholding foreign aid to the Kagame regime.
They state:
"We believe this is the wrong approach. Slashing international support
to Rwanda ignores the complexity of the problem within DRC's own
borders and the history and circumstances that have led to current
regional dynamics. Cutting aid does nothing to address the underlying
issues driving conflict in the region, it only ensures that the
Rwandan people will suffer -- and risks further destabilizing an
already troubled region."
"Complexity"! This sounds pretty much as Kagame advocating a "holistic
approach" to solve problems he's time and again manufactured in the
Congo.
If Blair and Buffet really wanted to help the region solve the
"current regional dynamics"--and in keeping with Kagame's "holistic
approach"-- they'd advise their client to talk with the FDLR, many of
whose members decry the usual hermetic response of Kagame to such
overtures.
Why should the DRC be stuck with the FDLR when time and again Congo
had been compelled to talk with "negative forces"--including the
Rwandan-created M23?
Blair and Buffet go on to say:
"Cutting aid to Rwanda also risks undoing one of Africa's great
success stories. In the last five years, Rwanda has lifted 1 million
people out of poverty, created 1 million new jobs, and is poised to
meet most of the U.N. Millennium Development Goals. It has safe
streets, functioning Internet and communications, and is building
roads and schools at an astonishing rate -- all without the benefit of
natural resource wealth or access to the sea. Much of this has been
accomplished with the help of Western aid."
Are these guys a pair of fairies? Rwanda has "safe streets"?
Maybe someone ought to tell these fairies that streets are only safe
in Rwanda for Rwandan cowards toeing Kagame's line. Obviously, it
seems that Blair and Buffet have never heard for example of the
beheading in July 2010 of opposition leader André Kagwa Rwisereka, an
assassination the Kagame regime blamed on Rwanda's unsafe streets!
I could go on and on refuting the ridiculous claims made by Blair and
Buffet in their insipid essay.
It'd only suffice to say that no one would ever take Blair seriously
ever since the New Republic's Ken Silverstein wrote his seminal exposé
on the former British Prime Minister titled "Buckraking Around The
World With Tony Blair" published in September 2012.
In that piece by Silverstein you learn that Blair is a mercenary who
had advised Gaddafi's son on his Ph.D. thesis and is a cheerleader of
Stalinist autocrat Nursultan Nazarbayev, the president-for-life of
Kazakhstan!
As we know that Kagame is jetting him to Kigali, we can only
legitimately assume that Blair is getting paid for his cheerleading on
behalf of Kagame!
***
PHOTO CREDITS: tonyblairoffice.org
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