Nkunda Challenges the Government in Congo

The latest flare-up of the crisis began Aug. 28, when Nkunda lit the fuse by breaking a peace agreement that his and 22 other armed groups had reached with the government on Jan. 23. The agreement had committed the groups to a ceasefire, and disengagement of their respective forces (Nkunda has an armed force of about 4,000, according to reports, and receives support via Rwanda).

Nkunda's forces surrounded Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, on Oct. 28. He halted his troops, and demanded that Kabila negotiate with him. He singled out the $9 billion joint venture deal Kabila had made with China, which he objects to. China is to provide $6 billion worth of road construction, two hydroelectric dams, and hospitals and schools, in addition to rail connections to southern Africa, and a railroad between the mineral-rich province of Katanga, in southern D.R.C., and the D.R.C.'s Atlantic port at Matadi, in return for copper and cobalt. Another $3 billion is to be invested primarily in developing new mining areas.

Strengthening the nation in this manner runs counter to the Brutish goal, which is shared by Nkunda, which may say something about how he is ultimately supported. He, along with other groups, run rogue mining operations in North Kivu, stealing minerals which they sell. Eastern D.R.C. is the second-richest mining area in the D.R.C., after Katanga in the South. The mineral merchant companies in Rwanda that buy these minerals, are no longer owned by the government, which has privatized them.

On Nov. 4, Nkunda threatened that if the government didn't talk to him on his terms, he would link up with other groups and overthrow Kabila. "We will continue fighting and we will fight all the way to Kinshasa," he said. That Nkunda would be able to do this with his 4,000 men, is considered ludicrous. No insurgency has been able to march from eastern D.R.C. to Kinshasa, in the past ten years, without the help of the Ugandan or Rwandan army. But until the D.R.C. has an adequately trained and equipped army, Nkunda will be able to keep the killing machine at work in North Kivu.

Kabila has refused to talk only to Nkunda, insisting on talking to all the groups in North Kivu. In addition to the over 20 militias, there are over 400 ethnic groups in the province, according to African sources. After Kabila's refusal, Nkunda's forces, over the last four days, asked the people to leave certain towns, and began systematically killing men who didn't heed their orders, according to news reports, because they considered them pro-government, and therefore, their enemies.

This activity is now being played up in the British press, allowing Malloch-Brown to militate for a greater role by Britain in this crisis, in order to bypass the UN and AU. Some are deluding themselves into thinking that because of the demands on Britain militarily, because of the Afghanistan deployment, the British won't have the troop strength to intervene into the D.R.C., and mess up the UN peacekeeping deployment. In fact, London's financial cartel would consider a British intervention into Africa, which would ultimately lead to a great population reduction, as having a higher strategic significance than Afghanistan, where other nations have been sucked in, to do little more than protect the drug production.

The intense ethnic conflict in Burundi and Rwanda, between Tutsis and Hutus, a legacy of the Belgian colonial period, continues to be the basis for manipulation in the region. No leader who ever tried to overcome this ethnic conflict, in either Rwanda or Burundi, has survived. The Tutsi-Hutu conflict has now spilled over into North Kivu, where members of both groups have migrated or fled. Nkunda is an example of this: He was born in the D.R.C., is a Tutsi, and fought alongside the Tutsi opposition in Rwanda, after the anti-Tutsi genocide there.

This conflict, which has claimed thousands of victims in both countries, has been easy for the London-based Anglo-Dutch financial cartel to manipulate. It provided the basis for the interventions into Congo, which was collapsing at an accelerating rate during the last seven years of the Mobutu dictatorship. In fact, the 1994 genocide was orchestrated by the British to worsen the conflict, and set in motion long-term prospects for destabilizing this part of Africa. No one outside the region who knew how it was set up, did anything to stop it.

http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2008/3545soros_genocide_congo.html