It's easy to forget what we're talking about when we talk about Rwanda's exploitation of the Congo. The truth is that Kabila's inability to stop Kagame and the M23 is completely inexcusable. Not only is Congo 80 times larger and eight times more populous, it is also vastly, almost unimaginably richer.
To be sure, Rwanda is behaving atrociously, but what is happening now in the Kivus reflects as badly on the failures of the Congolese government as it does on Rwandan avarice. Kabila has been in power for more than a decade. The prices for Congolese minerals have never been higher. There is no reason why a tiny, landlocked, ethnically riven, resource-deprived country should be taking such advantage of the Congo. The first responsibility of a state is to protect its territory and defend its hegemony. Kabila needs to take a serious look in the mirror and ask himself whether he wants to be known to history as a loser and failure, a figure of international contempt and ridicule. Because that is what he is fast becoming.
To my view, either Kabila does not know what to do, or he is not interested at all at changing this situation.
ReplyDeleteRemembering how it had been difficult for his father to have the international community admit the 1998 war as an agression, I do not understand how he fails to take advantage of the fact that western leaders are explicitly considering as such the current M23 crisis.
It seems he is being offered more support than he is willing to take. Never he voices against Rwanda, never he calls for anything against that country from the international community
I don't understand Kabila at all, to be honest. I mean, this is a man who doesn't even seem to be serious about pursuing the people who killed his father. It's inexplicable.
ReplyDeleteI don't understand Kabila myself.
ReplyDeleteCan't help it.