CNDP about to take Goma

Rutshuru is some thirty kilometres from the Rwandan border, about 15 kilometres from the Ugandan border and some eighty kilometers north of the North Kivu's provincial capital, Goma. It was reported from there earlier today that trucks were spotted carrying young boys who had been press ganged into joining Nkunda's CNDP, while the same CNDP pillages houses in the area.(1) In Goma itself the people, fearing the worse, are waiting for the CNDP to enter the city. Some are expecting them before the end of the year, while others are saying that they will take the city early in the new year.
Yesterday, I exposed myself for the first time to Susan Rice, the "hope and change" man's new Ambassador's to the United Nations, as she gave a speech on the Congo to the Brookings Institute on the 18th of December 2006.(2) Susan is, by the way, also considered to be a bit of an "Africa expert". Anyway, she can certainly talk, a real little bundle of veritable verbosity, and there she was talking about how the "Congo can sustain GDP growth etc etc" and "provide a democracy bonus" and "blah, blah, blah", but two years down the road we have to ask ourselves what is Susan and others like her actually doing and, more importantly, what is her employer, the US Government doing?
Nkunda is raping and pillaging in North Kivu, over half a million people in Goma are sitting trembling, waiting for his forces to enter the city and all we get from the international community in general, and from the United States in particular,are outpourings of verbal diahorrea at a time when a phone call from Washington to Nkunda's backer in Kigali might just get the "Mr Preacher Man" to take step back. That, however, is something that Washington, despite the academic drivel that comes out of people like Susan Rice's mouths, does not want, it is something Kagame in Kigali doesn't want and it most certainly is something that Nkunda doesn't want. We could hope that the "hope" man might make that phone call when he takes office in a month's time. However, not only is that extremely unlikely but it will also be too late by then and, at best, we can only hope the CNDP take the town as close as possible to the innauguration and that "Uncle Sam" will then try to tame their man in Africa before he wreaks too much havoc.
1 http://stopthewarinnorthkivu.wordpress.com/2008/12/19/forced-recrutement-in-rutshuru-continues/
2 http://fora.tv/2006/12/18/Way_Forward_in_the_Congo