Local Rivalries

While it is almost par for the course for political friends to turn on one another in Africa, it would also appear that cooperation between "not the best of friends" is possible there; according to today's 'New York Times' the combined forces of Uganda, Congo and the Southern Sudan have begun a joint operation against Joseph Kony's 'Lord's Resistance Army'(1) and that despite Congo blaming Uganda for a number of atrocities during an earlier five-year Congolese war, which ended in 2003.(2) Now, Kabila is working with the Ugandans, along with the South Sudanese Army, and a concerted effort is underway to push the L.R.A. back into Uganda and force Joseph Kony to sign a final peace agreement with the government in Kampala. Well, with Nkunda's CNDP and the FDLR (Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda) trying to outdo one another in the number of atrocities committed, a wee bit of cooperation against Kony's mob can be no bad thing and the Congo will have one nutter less in its mists and this guy is a nutter, according to an article, which is well quoted, in Wikipidea, Kony sees himself as the "spokesperson" of God and is wanting to establish a theocracy based on the ten commandments. The only problem for Kony might be that one of those commandments, if I remember the gobbly-gook book well enough is, "thou shalt not kill" and the LRA is accused of widespread human rights violation including murder, abduction, mutilation, sexual enslavement of woman and chilrden and forcing chldren to participate in hostilities.(3) Jesus, this guy really does appear to be right up there on a par with Laurant Nkunda the ordained Christian preacher who wears a badge that reads, "Rebels for Christ".(4) Onward Christian soldiers, indeed!
Of course, it all appears terribly confusing; we have the Tutsi Christian Nkunda, who was after all a General in the national army of the Transitional Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fighting against the democratically elected president of that Democratic Republic of the Congo and we have Congolese and Ugandan forces pursuing the 'Lord's Resistance Army' together despite the fact that the Ugandans perpetrated atrocities in the Congo during a five year war that resulted in the formation of that transitional government and we also have "Uncles Sam's" Tutsi friend Kagame next door in Rwanda. Of course, Uganda and the South Sudan have friends in and are friends of Washington and it might be that Kabila's government in Kinshasa is looking for a way out and some sort of compromise with the Americans and that, plus a genuine adversion to our Christian "friend" Kony, might be facilitating its working together with the South Sudanese and the Ugandan armies. Moreover, it might just be that Kabila's partner, China, is also looking for a way out that will allow it to save face. That, in turn, might allow Nkunda to be brought into some sort of coalition government at the insistance of the Americans. Ultimately, that might stop him terrifying the non-tutsi population of North Kivu. Of course, it all remains pure speculation and I am sure that, while Kony's days are numbered, his fellow Christian Nkunda will, until he either joins the government in Kinshasa or leads a break away North Kivu state or sees his demand that Kabila cancel the $9 billion joint Congo-China venture met, have time to slaughter a few more innocents. Whatever, we shouldn't expect this particular headcase to share the fate of either Kony or his old adversary, the Hutu Colonel, Theoneste Bagosora, who today was sentenced to life imprisonment today for his role in the 1994 genoicide in Rwanda. "Uncle Sam's" man in Africa still has some dirty work to do in North Kivu.
1 http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/world/africa/18briefs-AFRICANREGIO_BRF.html?ref=africa
2 http://www.economist.com/world/mideast-africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12821574
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord%27s_Resistance_Army
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurent_Nkunda
The map shows the Democratic Republic of the Congo