(PHOTO: A son of Tanzania People's Defense Force [TPDF] Khatib Mshindo grieves by his father's casket at Lugalo Military Hospital in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, before being flown to Zanzibar for burial. Maj. Mshindo, who was with MONUSCO's Force Intervention Brigade [FIB], was slain in a rocket-propelled grenade attack on the frontline in eastern DRC last week)
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Faceless anchors of Radio-Trottoir, the grapevine of Kinshasa and other DRC's urban areas, are busy these days at street corners spreading rumors about the start of Africa's World War II.
According to them, the trigger and the marker of the new war is what Tanzanian authorities are calling the "murder" in a rocket-propelled grenade attack last week in North Kivu of Zanzibari-born Major Khatid Mshindo. An RPG attack carried out by M23.
The RPG attack occurred about the same time as self-inflicted shelling incidents were occurring at Rwandan border hamlet of Rubavu. (I say "self-inflicted" as it has since been established by the UN that the flak Rwanda got issued from M23-occupied territory in the Congo where US and UN intelligence sources have also established the presence of hundreds of special operators of the Rwandan Defense Force).
Veteran Belgian journo Colette Braeckman quipped about the cruel injustice of those bombs falling in Rubabu on the popular and poor neighborhood of Mudugudu while sparing the quarter called "RCD" where pro-Rwandan former Congolese "notables" have built "multistoried villas with colonnettes." No doubt with money from the plunder of Congo resources, I'd add!
These self-inflicted bombings prompted Ms. Louise Mushikiwabo, Rwanda's Foreign Minister, to come up with the her zaniest statement to date, saying that the time has long past when Rwanda would stand idle by as the allied and combined forces of FARDC-FDLR are targeting Rwandan civilian population.
According to the DRC government, Mushikiwabo's verbal attack was just grasping at straws, in her desperate attempt to come with a rationale to justify Rwanda's ongoing aggression of the Congo under the cover of the "right of pursuit."
But make no mistake: Mushikiwabo has never freelance her ill-mannered and undiplomatic outbursts; she's hen-pecked by President by President Paul Kagame.
This was evident in May of this year when she started insulting Tanzania's President Jakaya Kikwete who made the cardinal sin of suggesting that Rwanda and Uganda also negotiate with their "negative forces"--just as these countries were insisting that the DRC does. Shortly after Mushikiwabo's opening salvos, Kagame followed suit--using the same insults as his Foreign Minister.
A new expression was coined in Rwanda's state-controlled media to refer to the "genocidal ideology" of the FDLR: the Kikwete ideology.
And last week, after Mushikiwabo's ill-founded accusation laced with insults, Kagame ordered Rwandan troops to move west, to Rwanda's border with the DRC.
Colette Braeckman, who was in the region on the Rwandan side, counted: 20 semitrailers carrying 2 armored vehicles each; and 40 troop transport trucks carrying 50 troops each.
Africa's World War II was afoot, as Kinshasa Radio-Trottoir would have it.
Rwanda--having conflated Kikwete, the FDLR, and the FARDC into one single entity--it was obvious that in the event of Rwandan penetration into the Congo, a confrontation with Tanzanian troops on the ground in North Kivu would be unavoidable.
Especially as tensions were cranked up several notches recently between Rwanda and Tanzania when the latter kicked out 5,000 Rwandan "illegal immigrants"; whereas Rwanda is charging that some of its nationals deported from Tanzania have "lived there for over six decades," according to the Kigali-based daily New Times, which also adds that 75% of the returnees are kids!
Uganda in the meantime has sent its troops to occupy the DRC territory of Mahagi over some bogus frontier dispute and is massing more troops as the Congolese army is inching toward Kibumba, close to the border.
Would cool heads prevail this Thursday September 5 at the Kampala summit of heads of state of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR)?
No one knows. But the DRC, whose hand has been strengthened with its recent military victories, is now ratcheting up its demands on M23, demanding that the pro-Rwandan militia lay down its weapons first, before any meaningful talk with the Congolese government.
And Congolese citizens, who've been spoiling for war with Rwanda, are cheering on the sidelines, crossing their fingers in the hope that more mortar shells would land on Gisenyi and Rubavu so that the ongoing ratatat-tats would turn into the rumbling of an all-out no-holds-barred regional confrontation.
"Rwandans have got to also experience firsthand the woes of instability," I heard someone say today. "Enough is enough! Let's move into Rwanda!"
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PHOTO CREDITS: Photo by Michael Jamson via thecitizen.co.tz
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