Kony heads West

Kony is now heading west for the Central African Republic but the more I delve into this region, the more I realise that the borders, which cut through tribal and political affiliations, don't really mean that much. Kabila in Kinshasa seems to have buried the hatchet with Museveni in Kampala and Lambert Mende Omalanga, Kabila's spokesman, said recently, "We have given the LRA the chance to negotiate peace with the authorities in its country, but in the end they refused to sign. We cannot keep people on our territory who kill innocents."(1) Kony is denying the massacre blaming it on the Ugandan, DRC and South Sudan SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) forces who are pursuing him but, of course, he would and surely the UN can, at least, be trusted to be reporting the facts. However, we do know that all of the armies in the region are capable of atrocities.(2) Therefore, one, wonders if that is enough to justify Kinshasa's interest in Kony after all the DRC army still has Nkunda in North Kivu to deal with and Nkunda is supported by his fellow tutsi, Kagame. Still, with Rwanda having, at best, an ambiguous relationship, with Kampala, perhaps, Kabila can make friends in the region.
Of course, Kony at the time of my writing this will probably already be in the Central African Republic, which is also full of diamonds and other goodies, and the next time I write about this complicated story there will be another actor in the drama, General Francois Bozize, the French backed president of the CAR, which brings me onto another story; what are the French doing in Africa? It is, of course, the answer to that question that brings us to the real story behind the story with France, the United States, China and Britain pulling the strings and it would appear that not much has changed in Africa in the last hundred years.
1 http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24863250-32682,00.html
2 http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/12/29/africa/30uganda-398149.php