A Secret Deal with Kagame?

According to La Lettre du Continent, France's President Sarkozy is going to propose that the Congo permit Rwanda to police the eastern Congo and eliminate the FDLR and CNDP threats. In return, the mineral wealth of the eastern Congo will be put in a "common pot" under the auspices of one or another of the regional economic hubs--either the CEEAC or the CEPLG. The Congo would then issue licenses and garner royalties from the countries or companies exploiting the minerals.

Sarkozy is said to be keen to make this deal happen on his trip to Africa in late March, and Kagame is also said to be enthusiastic about it. France and Rwanda have been on a slow-motion diplomatic game of chicken for some time now, with each country accusing the other's government of either initiating or actively supporting the 1994 genocide. This rapprochement could enable both countries to avert what appeared to be an oncoming train wreck.

The Lettre says that the seed of the proposal was first planted by Herman Cohen in his op-ed in the New York Times. Cohen, the Lettre says, is now a lobbyist for French interests in Africa. As has been well-documented elsewhere, Cohen is one of those frighteningly amoral people, a man who turned his State Department connections into high-paying gigs lobbying for some of Africa's ugliest dictators, including Laurent Kabila. But when his op-ed came out, I couldn't tell what angle he was working, and criticized his proposal merely for being unworkable.

The Congolese newspapers have been in an uproar about Sarkozy's plan since they got wind of it a couple of days ago (here, and here). They believe the ground is being laid, internationally, to trade off Congolese patrimony to appease their invaders. And they see further evidence of that possibility in their own government's decision last week to allow Rwandan troops directly onto Congolese soil, ostensibly to round-up the ex-genocidaires still at large in eastern Congo.

To be honest, I thought the Kinshasa rumor mill was just operating in overdrive, and even thought about writing a piece making fun of their "Grand Unified Theory." Not all dots necessarily connect, as I keep reminding Congolese friends. But Congolese history is just too replete with the most brazen sort of opportunism to dismiss all of this as a mere conspiracy. Stay tuned.

What's Going on in the East?

Laurent Nkunda, the leader of the Tutsi-dominated rebel movement CNDP, appears to have put down a coup attempt by his chief of staff, General Bosco Ntaganda.

Ntaganda reportedly sent a statement to the media on Monday (1/5) claiming that he had ousted Nkunda, a statement that was immediately denied by Nkunda's spokesman. Nkunda insists he remains in control of the rebel movement and says his military chief will be disciplined for insubordination, which he called an "act of madness."

Rwanda's New Times reports that the CNDP's military high command was to have met yesterday to discuss Ntaganda's fate. Nkunda himself was expected to chair that meeting, in the Rutshuru area of Nord-Kivu.

Meanwhile, Ntaganda spoke to journalists yesterday at a hillside farm at Kabati, a village located about thirty miles northwest of Rutshuru. Reuters says that Ntaganda accused Nkunda of being an obstacle to peace: "The head of the CNDP has been removed, but the CNDP remains." Ntaganda, said the Reuters report, was flanked by "dozens of fighters" and other CNDP leaders.

However, Jason Stearns, the head of the recent UN expert group report, said that he doubted Ntaganda would be able to peel off much support from Nkunda. While Ntaganda is popular with rank-and-file soldiers, most of whom are from the same Gogwe clan, most of the CNDP commanders have rallied behind Nkunda.

Reuters says that U.N. officials and human rights campaigners believe that Ntaganda acted after learning that Nkunda planned to discipline him for the massacre in Kiwanja in November, in which as many as 150 civilians were killed.

News of the Kiwanja massacre made the front page of the New York Times, and the recent UN expert report documented close ties between the CNDP and the Rwandan government, prompting various Scandinavian governments to pull their financial support to Rwanda.

Kagame could be worried that supporting Nkunda is beginning to cost him too much international support. And he may feel less of a need to support the CNDP now that the Congolese government has agreed to allow joint military operations within its territory against the FDLR. So Nkunda probably offered up Ntaganda as a sacrifice, to give Kagame some wiggle room with the international donor community. Only Ntaganda wasn't willing to be the fall guy, especially since the ICC has a warrant out for his arrest. He doesn't want to spend the next 20 years in some cell in The Hague.

Now the question is how long Ntaganda will be able to operate on his own, cut off from the CNDP and Rwanda. Reuters' report that he was surrounded by "dozens" of soldiers suggests that he doesn't have a lot support for the long haul.

For his part, Nkunda has to be worried about the viability of his movement, given the increasing pressure from above and the defections and threats from below. And if MONUC ever gets those extra 3,000 troops, he'll be facing a third threat, head-on: an international force with a mandate to put him out of business. These are desperate times for Nkunda.

Kristof's Double Standards

So last week Nicholas Kristof of the NYT wrote an op-ed on military options for the new administration regarding Darfur. Numerous advocacy groups have emerged since Colin Powell first declared in 2004 that the Sudanese regime was committing genocide in Darfur. Most of these organizations have been as vague in their recommendations as they have urgent in their tone. But Kristof, cribbing off recommendations from a source in the State Department, is uncharacteristically clear about the options:

The United States could jam all communications in Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. This would include all telephone calls, all cellular service, all Internet access...
The United States could apply progressive pressure to Port Sudan, from which Sudan exports oil and thus earns revenue. The first step would be to send naval vessels near the port. The next step would be to search or turn back some ships, and the final step would be to impose a quarantine and halt Sudan’s oil exports...
The United States could target Sudanese military aircraft that defy a United Nations ban on offensive military flights in Darfur. The first step would be to destroy a helicopter gunship on the ground at night.

What Kristof doesn't address is the concern that Sudan has become too complicated--both morally and politically--for a categorical, hardline approach to work. According to the Washington Post, while the government-sponsored Janjaweed caused most of the displacement and suffering during the first two years of the conflict in 2004-2005, the conflict is more fluid now, "with fighting among various Arab tribes and rebel factions displacing more people this year than government bombings."

More irritating to me is Kristof's double standards when it comes to Rwanda, about which he never fails to gush: "Increasingly [in Africa] there are new leaders like Paul Kagame here in Rwanda who are honest, intelligent and capable. President Kagame reads Harvard Business Review and is an African version of Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore. Both are authoritarian, repressive and quirky (Mr. Kagame banned plastic bags to curb litter). Both did wonders for their countries' living standards."

Forget that the Rwandan government uses security concerns to close down and punish civil and political opposition. Forget that the government’s true power base is shrinking even as its outer circle (such as its much-lauded women parliamentarians) is growing. Forget that it is seen within Rwanda as representative only of the repatries--the Tutsi refugees from Uganda who made up the rebel army that put Kagame in power, and that this is a government determined at all costs to stay in power. Forget its own widespread human rights violations--which, although not on the scale of a genocide, include massacres and political assassinations.

Consider only that it has launched a war in the Congo that has so far cost 5 million lives. Consider that there is by now more than enough evidence that Rwanda's putative security concerns are a fig-leaf: that it has been documented in report after report after report to have been interested in only one thing: Congo's minerals--even to the extent of cooperating with the genocidaires in extracting them. Why are we not only not condemning Rwanda, but actively supporting it? When will Kristof lend his voice to the call to stop subsidizing Rwanda's murderous behavior in the Congo--as the Economist and Independent have done?

That Rwanda is well-run is no excuse. Kagame is not the first leader to have made the trains run on time.