Worries about Rwanda’s record on human and political rights are now compounded by worries about its economic record.

TO BE NOTED: From the Economist:

"The genocide in Rwanda

The difficulty of trying to stop it happening ever again

Apr 8th 2009 | KIGALI
From The Economist print edition

Fifteen years on, the country is praised for salving the wounds of genocide. Yet that comes at the price of diminishing freedom. And now the economy is faltering

AP

EVEN today, it is almost impossible to imagine how so many Rwandans could have turned into coldblooded butchers. The memorials to the slain that now grace many of the towns and villages in the country provide only small glimpses into the collective insanity that gripped a whole country in April 1994, when the Hutu killers turned on their Tutsi fellow citizens and Hutu sympathisers, leaving over 800,000 dead in three months.

Take the memorial at the National University of Rwanda in Butare, a couple of hours’ drive south-west of the capital, Kigali. Under a corrugated iron roof a long board displays the photographs of about 60 students who were killed. In fact, most of the staff and students at the university, over 500 in all, were slaughtered in just two weeks or so; only a few escaped across the nearby borders to Congo or Burundi. Many of the students were killed by their own teachers, specifically the dean of agriculture and vice-dean of political science. The former not only personally killed students but organised the campus massacre as well. What could have been running through their minds in the weeks leading up to the killings, as these highly educated people calculated how best they could hack or shoot their own students to death?

These awful questions haunt Rwanda to this day. It is only a mixed comfort to the genocide’s few survivors at the university that those two former academics responsible for many of their friends’ deaths are still in prison, just down the road. Some think they should have had a worse fate. But one of Rwanda’s main problems, in terms of justice and retribution, has been that so many Hutus, hundreds of thousands of them, became génocidaires; it was always going to be impossible to impose the harshest sentences on all of them. Only the ringleaders have been tried by an international court sitting in neighbouring Tanzania. Thousands of others in Rwanda have been sentenced to prison by local traditional courts known as gacaga. Gangs of them can be seen in their distinctive overalls, doing hard labour, digging irrigation ditches and so on, all over Rwanda.

They are a constant visual reminder of the crimes of 15 years ago. Indeed, in some ways Rwanda is facing as difficult a struggle today with the legacy of the genocide as at any time since 1994. For it is only now that thousands of former génocidaires who have been fighting for many years from bases in the jungles of eastern Congo against the current Tutsi-dominated government are at last returning to Rwanda.

That they are returning at all is a victory for the long-term strategy of President Paul Kagame’s government to bring back the country’s previously hostile Hutus from the near abroad. Most of them were put to flight by Mr Kagame’s own then-rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), that forced an end to the genocide in 1994. They are being re-educated in special camps in the hope that they can be peacefully reintegrated into Rwandan society.

But even if the policy works, it will come at a high price for the Tutsi survivors of the genocide. Freddy Mutanguha, who manages the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, is used to dealing with the genocide’s consequences. Yet even he found it “too difficult” when two of the returning génocidaires moved into his home village of Kibuye a couple of months ago after they came back from Congo. So now his neighbours are two known killers “being fed and protected by the Rwandan government”. Mr Mutanguha, understandably, did not want to return to his own home to see them.

Courage and even generosity of spirit in dealing with an awful situation has earned Mr Kagame’s government high marks in the West and in Africa as a whole. After all, Rwanda is the only genocide case where the victims, the Tutsi, have chosen to reintegrate their killers into the country and to live as neighbours again—a uniquely hard task, especially in Africa’s most densely populated country. In other genocide cases, the victims have left altogether, sometimes to help found a new state of their own, such as Israel, or have been marginalised in their own country, as were the Herero in South-West Africa, now Namibia. To encourage reconciliation, Rwanda has embarked on an experiment to change completely the way a new generation thinks about itself. Now, officially, no one is a Hutu or Tutsi; there are only Rwandans. Ethnicity, the genocide’s alleged cause, is being outlawed.

The use and abuse of anti-genocide law

For sure, the government’s policy has contributed to a new era of peace; Rwanda, it is generally agreed, is now one of Africa’s most law-abiding countries. Yet the reach and ferocity of new laws encouraging reconciliation are making Western donors and many Rwandans queasy. Is the country paying too high a price for its policy?

Critics fear that any challenge to an already authoritarian government is gradually being outlawed under a pretext of criminalising the promotion of so-called “genocide ideology”. There were already stiff penalties for “divisionism”, an acknowledgment of differences between Hutu and Tutsi. But last year a new and even fiercer law was passed, carrying heavy penalties. Its criminalisation of genocide ideology is so broadly drawn that it could be used to prosecute people for any number of utterances.

Clause three, for instance, states that the crime of promoting genocide ideology is characterised by “dehumanising a person or group with the same characteristics”, and that this can be done by “marginalising, laughing at one’s misfortune, defaming, mocking, boasting, despising, degrading, creating confusion aimed at negating the genocide which occurred, stirring up ill feelings”.

About 1,300 cases involving genocide ideology were initiated in Rwanda’s courts in the 2007-08 judicial year, even before the latest law was passed. Human-rights critics say these ill-defined laws are being abused by the government, enabling it to prosecute anyone, including young children, who say anything the government dislikes or who draw attention to the role of Mr Kagame’s own RPF in the massacres of 1994. For many, justice has been too partial in post-genocide Rwanda; many of Mr Kagame’s men, estimated by the UN to have killed up to 45,000 people between April and August 1994, have got off lightly.

These draconian laws chime with the government’s general dislike of dissent. Some foreign critics are now banned from entering the country, however sympathetic they may have been to Rwanda in the past. Alison des Forges was probably the greatest foreign expert on Rwanda until her death in a plane crash in February. She had been the most sensitive and thorough chronicler of the genocide but, as an increasingly vocal critic of Mr Kagame’s human-rights record, she was banned last year, her death barely marked in Kigali. Open political opposition is declining. At elections the formal opposition parties largely mimic the government line and then join the government afterwards. There is little real choice.

Worries about Rwanda’s record on human and political rights are now compounded by worries about its economic record. Indeed, they are related. The economic recovery after the genocide, when Hutu militias looted the country before fleeing into Congo, had been remarkable, if largely funded by the diaspora and by foreign aid. But in the past few years it has stalled. The number of Rwandans living in extreme poverty is reckoned to have declined from over 75% in 1994 to 57% in 2006. But the figure has barely moved since then. Because of a rapid increase in population, the absolute number of people in poverty has probably risen.

Rwanda now needs a vigorous private sector to keep the economy moving in the right direction, especially if the country is to meet its lofty goal of becoming east Africa’s service hub. The government talks up its eagerness for free enterprise, endearing it to the West, but entrepreneurs, especially from abroad, often feel hamstrung in what they are allowed to do—and so leave. A controlling government will hurt Rwanda’s economic prospects as well as its wider freedoms; the two are indivisible."

Being a head of state is not like being in a restaurant. I have to have time to think about it.

From Tyler Cowen:

"Africa's World War

The subtitle is Congo, The Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe and yes the book truly explains all of these things or at least gives it a noble try. The author is Gérard Prunier. I've been stunned by how much I've learned from this book, which is clear without denying the underlying complexities. I rate it as one of the two excellent books of the year so far, the other being Ted Gioia's book on the history of the blues.

You'll find a very critical review of the book here but I was more impressed by the book than by the review. I liked this excerpt:

Interviewer: What model of democracy do you see as suitable?

Kabila: I cannot say now, you are asking too much. Being a head of state is not like being in a restaurant. I have to have time to think about it.

Me:

I'd like to recommend a few blogs:

http://stopthewarinnorthkivu.wordpress.com/

http://blogs.lesoir.be/colette-braeckman/

http://blogs.reuters.com/africa/

Posted by: Don the libertarian Democrat at Jan 31, 2009 5:01:03 PM

"triggered a conflict-driven humanitarian catastrophe that killed an estimated 5.4 million people."

From Reuters:

1 of 1Full Size

By John Kanyunyu

KIBATI, Congo (Reuters) - Rwandan troops crossed into eastern Congo on Tuesday in a joint military operation by the Great Lakes neighbours to disarm Rwandan Hutu rebels seen as a root cause of more than a decade of conflict.( WOW )

While both countries presented the operation as part of internationally-backed efforts to end conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo, analysts said allowing the Rwandan army in posed political risks for Congolese President Joseph Kabila.( TRUE )

The presence of the Rwandan Hutu FDLR fighters, who finance themselves by exploiting illegal mines( NB ) in the mineral-rich east, triggered two previous Rwandan invasions of Congo that led to a wider 1998-2003 conflict. It also helped cause a 2004 rebellion by Congo Tutsi rebels who went on the offensive late last year.

Diplomats and U.N. peacekeepers said that up to 2,000 Rwandan troops entered Congo's eastern North Kivu province on Tuesday under a December joint accord to act against the mostly Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).

The FDLR's strength is estimated at around 6,000 fighters, spread across North and South Kivu.

"The operations are beginning. We have invited Rwandan officers with their security contingents for their safety. They are observers ... The operations to disarm the FDLR are planned for a length of 10 to 15 days," Lambert Mende, Congo's information minister and government spokesman, told Reuters.

But the size of the Rwandan deployment appeared to be more than a simple observation mission.

A Reuters reporter saw hundreds of Rwandan troops, wearing Rwandan flag patches on their uniforms and carrying mortars, rocket launchers and AK-47s, moving into Congo in the Kibati area north of the North Kivu provincial capital Goma.

Rwandan military spokeswoman Major Jill Rutaremara told Reuters in Kigali the details of the operation were "secret".

Rwanda's Information Minister, Louise Mushikiwabo, said the Rwandan forces would operate under Congolese command.

"This is a result of recent intense and sincere efforts -- diplomatic, military and other ... to bring peace and stability to the region." he told Reuters by text message.

U.N. peacekeepers also confirmed the Rwandan deployment.

"This morning between 1,500 and 2,000 RDF (Rwanda Defence Forces) crossed the border in the Munigi-Kibati zone," Lieutenant-Colonel Jean-Paul Dietrich, military spokesman for the U.N. force, MONUC, said. MONUC, the biggest U.N. peace force, said it had not been involved in planning the operation.

Congolese army forces were on the move with tanks, armoured personnel carriers and mobile rocket launchers, Dietrich said.

FEARS OF ESCALATION

Analysts said the latest entry of Rwandan troops into Congo, at the same time as a Ugandan-led offensive against Ugandan LRA rebels further north in Orientale, were an acknowledgement by Kabila that he had failed to pacify his country( VERY TRUE ). He had promised to do this after winning 2006 elections.

"Look where we are, two years after elections, the Rwandan army back in Congo and the Ugandans are back in Congo ... and the Congolese get screwed again( SAD BUT TRUE )," one veteran foreign Congo analyst, who asked not be named, said.

The analyst recalled Congo's 1998-2003 war, when Rwanda and Uganda backed rival rebel groups.

"It's a confirmation of what everybody knows -- the DRC army has no control over its own territory( TRUE )," said a foreign diplomat.

The presence in eastern Congo of Rwandan Hutu FDLR rebels, many of whom participated in Rwanda's 1994 genocide, has been at the heart of more than a decade of bloodshed.

The 1998-2003 war sucked in the armies of half a dozen nearby countries, and triggered a conflict-driven humanitarian catastrophe that killed an estimated 5.4 million( 5.4 MILLION ) people.

Rwanda and Congo have agreed on several past occasions to cooperate to tackle the Hutu rebels, but have failed to carry this out amid accusations that ill-disciplined Congolese government forces have sided with the FDLR Hutu fighters.

Fighting flared again in North Kivu last October, when the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), a Congolese Tutsi rebel group led by renegade General Laurent Nkunda ended a ceasefire and launched an offensive against Goma.

The fighting, which killed hundreds and displaced around 250,000 people, prompted fears of a fresh regional war.

U.N. experts told the Security Council last month that the governments of both Rwanda and Congo had been backing rebel groups in the conflict, and recommended targeted sanctions such as travel bans and freezing of assets against some individuals( ANYTHING ).

Since then diplomatic efforts to achieve a peaceful solution have picked up pace with frequent high-level contacts between Kigali and Kinshasa, in the absence of formal diplomatic ties."

If they actually cooperate, this might be the right course of action to end this nightmare.

"a serious rift in the C.N.D.P., and it’s clear that it will compromise the Nairobi peace talks.”

The Congo in the NY Times:

"By LYDIA POLGREEN

Published: January 11, 2009

DAKAR, Senegal — Disagreements over tactics and power have split the once seemingly invincible Congolese rebel group that has played havoc across the eastern side of the country over the past year and has brought the weakened government to the edge of collapse.

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Benedicte Kurzen/VII Mentor

Gen. Laurent Nkunda last fall in eastern Congo, where his thriving rebel group has humiliated Congolese troops in the past year.

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Times Topics: Congo

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Lionel Healing/Agence France Presse — Getty Images

Jean Bosco Ntaganda, a rebel known as the Terminator and shown on Sunday near Goma, has split with General Nkunda.

Gen. Laurent Nkunda, the leader of the Tutsi-dominated rebel group known as the C.N.D.P., is fighting off an attempt to topple him by Jean Bosco Ntaganda, his chief of staff, a ruthless fighter known as the Terminator who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes, according to accounts from both camps.( HE'S A WAR CRIMINAL )

The rebel group has humiliated Congolese troops in battle after battle in the past year, growing in momentum and ambition to the point where it has directly threatened the regional capital, Goma. The result has been hundreds of thousands of people displaced, and a serious undermining of the government, the country’s first freely chosen one in four decades.

Although there have been no accounts yet of actual combat between General Nkunda’s and Mr. Ntaganda’s camps, the split is likely to complicate efforts to win peace in the troubled region. Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president of Nigeria, has been shuttling between the Congolese government and General Nkunda’s rebels in their jungle hide-outs as the United Nations envoy to the faltering peace talks aimed at ending the fighting with the government.

Jason Stearns, an independent Congo analyst who recently served on a United Nations panel examining the conflict there, said that it was unlikely that Mr. Ntaganda’s decision to split from General Nkunda came lightly, and that the split would have serious repercussions for faltering peace talks taking place in Nairobi, Kenya.

“Nobody has been able to say where the senior command stands,” he said. “We are all trying to see what will emerge. What is clear is this has produced a serious rift in the C.N.D.P., and it’s clear that it will compromise the Nairobi peace talks.” ( TRUE )

Mr. Ntaganda declared himself the leader of the C.N.D.P. last Monday and claims to have taken a significant portion of the group’s fighters with him. General Nkunda insists that he remains in control and has tried to play down the disagreement. He told Reuters in an interview that Mr. Ntaganda had been “disrespectful” but remained a member of the rebel group, and that a commission of rebel leaders had been sent “to listen to him, to bring him back to his senses.”

The fracture seems to have been building for some time as the two men disagreed over how far the rebellion should go to achieve its aims — and in some ways over what those aims actually were, according to diplomats and analysts in the region. Mr. Ntaganda wanted to push harder and overrun Goma last year, and he told some of the rebellion’s backers that he was disappointed when General Nkunda heeded United Nations demands to hold back, according to human rights investigators.

General Nkunda, meanwhile, was dismayed by the barrage of international criticism that came after a massacre by his troops in November that was led by Mr. Ntaganda, according to a close ally of the general who spoke on condition of anonymity.

At least 150 people were killed in about 24 hours in the town of Kiwanja in early November. A report in The New York Times and an investigation by Human Rights Watch based on witnesses’ accounts found that fighters went door to door, killing mostly unarmed boys and young men, accusing them of being enemy fighters.

The faction loyal to General Nkunda discussed the possibility of handing Mr. Ntaganda over to the International Criminal Court, contacting at least one international organization about how this might be achieved, according to a person at the organization who was briefed on the matter( NOW WE KNOW WHY HE'S DOING THIS. TOO BAD THEY DIDN'T GET HIM. ).

General Nkunda’s group has rung up a series of military victories, routing the Congolese Army in an offensive late last year, reaching the outskirts of Goma and taking several other important towns.

But the dispute between the two most powerful men in an insurgency that has until now seemed unified and unstoppable creates the first cracks in the invincible image General Nkunda has cultivated.( I WAS FOOLED BY NKUNDA'S REMARKS )

It could also offer the government some breathing room for the first time in months, said Alison Des Forges, a senior adviser for Africa at Human Rights Watch.

“If it comes to military conflict, we could potentially see the situation dissolve into even further combat,” she said. “But it also offers an opportunity for Congo’s forces to get themselves together and gives more time to find a political solution while the two factions argue it out.”

General Nkunda and Mr. Ntaganda share similar histories. Both are Congolese Tutsi who fought alongside the Rwandan Tutsi rebels who overthrew Rwanda’s Hutu-led government in the aftermath of the genocide there in 1994. They both found their way back to Congo by fighting in Rwandan- and Ugandan-backed rebel groups there as Congo descended into a broad regional conflict set off by the genocide’s aftermath. Both men have been accused of serious human rights violations( TO ME, NKUNDA IS NOT CLEARLY ANY BETTER. HE'S A BETTER BSer. ), though the International Criminal Court has named only Mr. Ntaganda so far.

But they differ profoundly in both style and tactics. General Nkunda is well educated and a fiery and articulate speaker( BS ARTIST ). He has refused virtually every attempt to settle his differences with the Congolese government, and in the wake of his military triumphs has essentially refused to recognize the legitimacy of the first elected government that Congo has known in more than four decades. But Mr. Ntaganda is much more pragmatic, and in the past few days has accused General Nkunda of blocking peace efforts in eastern Congo.( THIS IS WHAT SURPRISES ME )

Ms. Des Forges said Mr. Ntaganda was “somebody who has made his career out of being a useful military person regardless of the cause.”

“I don’t think he has the kind of aspiration of Nkunda,” she said, “but I think he is someone who can transfer his loyalties and adapt his position depending on his interests.”

What a mess. Did I mention Ethnic Conflict?

Without steadfast support from France, which armed the genocidal regime and helped train its killers, the slaughter would have been impossible.

A good post on the Guardian:

"Stephen Kinzer

• 
  
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 January 2009 19.00 GMT
• Article history

An international tribunal has sentenced the mastermind of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Colonel Theoneste Bagosora, to life imprisonment after convicting him of "genocide and crimes against humanity and war crimes". The verdict, though, is at best a mixed victory for the cause of global justice.

Bagosora richly deserves his sentence. Rwandans themselves bear the central guilt for their tragedy, and he was among the guiltiest. Shortly before the slaughter began, he announced that he was preparing a "second apocalypse". Tutsi-led rebels were close to overthrowing the regime he helped run, and along with a couple of dozen like-minded comrades, he decided that its best hope was to kill every Tutsi in the country. They almost succeeded, organising the murder of as many as one million people or more in a 100-day period.

As punishment, Bagosora will likely spend the rest of his days in material conditions far better than those enjoyed by 95% of Rwandans. He will be deprived of his freedom, but the world's taxpayers, through the UN, will assure that he has a comfortable cell, three meals a day and the world's finest medical care.

One thing will be missing, though. In the modern age, prisons that hold war criminals, political murderers and other terrorists are populated mostly by brutes like Bagosora – people easily portrayed as thugs from thuggish places. So the newly convicted genocide mastermind will not have the chance to exchange thoughts with his more genteel enablers.

In a just world, Bagosora might have French company in his cell block. Without steadfast support from France, which armed the genocidal regime and helped train its killers, the slaughter would have been impossible. So it seems only fair that a few French aristocrats be held responsible. One candidate would be former foreign minister Alain Juppe, who built a framework within which the slaughter could be carried out by telling the world that it was not genocide but "tribal war" in which opposing groups were equally guilty. There could also be room in the block for others who shielded the Rwandan regime as it killed, among them Edouard Balladur, Dominique de Villepin and Hubert Vedrine.( A GOOD POINT )

No one ever took more delight in these men's company than the lifelong Francophone Boutros Boutros-Ghali, so it would be a shame to leave him off the cellblock. As UN secretary-general in 1994, Boutros-Ghali made sure no security council members ever saw the anguished cables that were pouring into New York from the desperate UN commander in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire. Those cables made clear that the killing was no eruption of "tribal war", but the work of Bagosora and a clique of other fanatics who might easily have been intimidated with even a modest show of force.

While the genocide unfolded, Boutros-Ghali was on an extended tour of Europe. To make sure Dallaire's damning cables remained hidden, he relied on his trusted deputy, Kofi Annan, who was then head of UN peacekeeping operations. If there is room for Boutros-Ghali and his French friends on Bagosora's block, there should also be room for Annan.( WOW )

No international gathering these days is complete without Bill Clinton, and by some standards he too could qualify for a cell on Bagosora's block. During the 100 days of genocide in Rwanda, Clinton never even convened a meeting to discuss it because he knew that the facts were so awful that if he confronted them, he would be compelled to act. Later he said he had not known what was happening in Rwanda. General Dallaire called him a liar, and Philippe Galliard, who ran Red Cross operations in Rwanda during the genocide, agreed. "Everybody knew, every day, live, what was happening," he said after Clinton's whopper.( A DISGRACE )

Just as Boutros-Ghali had an ambitious underling who was salivating for the big job, and who knew that demanding action to stop genocide in Rwanda would ruin his chances, so did Clinton. His was Madeleine Albright. As America's ambassador to the UN, she worked tirelessly to assure that the peacekeeping force was kept too small and toothless to stop the killing. Later she helped block a plan to send UN police to disarm the hundreds of thousands of Rwandan genocidaires who had fled to camps in eastern Congo – a piece of work that helped create today's Congolese hell.( DISGRACEFUL )

Justice works slowly, and none more slowly than the international kind. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has spent more than a billion dollars since its creation in 1995, but has completed only 40 cases. All the defendants have been Rwandans, as undoubtedly will be all those convicted in the future. The tribunal's motto is "never again". A better one would from an old Bob Dylan song: The executioner's face is always well hidden."

And this has led to the Congo.

“Democracy is not elections. Democracy is legitimacy. And legitimacy comes from what you are doing to your people.”

Here's a portrait of a War Criminal:

"BUNAGANA, Congo — At the entrance to this bustling border town is a most unusual sight: a speed limit sign. In fresh red, white and blue paint, it is a rare manifestation of order in a nation better known for chaos.

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Benedicte Kurzen/VII Mentor

Mr. Nkunda at a training camp in North Kivu Province for the group of rebels that he leads.

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Lydia Polgreen on Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda

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Times Topics: Laurent Nkunda | Congo

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Gen. Laurent Nkunda, the leader of a group of rebels, with his pet goat Betty in the mountains of Congo. His aims include the removal of President Joseph Kabila, whose power has been waning.

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Benedicte Kurzen/VII Mentor

Gen. Laurent Nkunda after a meeting with the news media in November in the town of Kichanga in Congo.

The seemingly innocuous signpost is emblematic of the growing might and wider ambitions of Laurent Nkunda, the renegade Congolese general and warlord who now holds part of Congo’s future in his grip.

“I am fighting for the destiny of this country,” said Mr. Nkunda, offering up the orderly streets and neatly terraced farms of the surrounding countryside as evidence of what Congo might be like if he ran things. “What we want is to restore the dignity of this country and these people.”

But beneath the veneer lies a ruthlessness of a piece with Congo’s unbroken history of brutality. With a military campaign in October and November that was met with a feeble response( THIS IS A DISGRACE ) from both the Congolese government and United Nations peacekeeping forces here in eastern Congo, General Nkunda has pushed the nation to its most dangerous precipice in years.

Many here fear a new regional war or that an alliance of convenience between General Nkunda and other enemies of the president could lead to the ouster of Congo’s first democratically elected government in four decades.

That General Nkunda, who is suspected of committing a litany human rights violations, could be a leading figure in such a move is a chilling thought for many Congolese. A recent journey through territory he controls revealed a host of contradictions between the image he puts forward and reality, including evidence of mass killings, the extraction of onerous payments from residents, illegal profiteering from the mineral trade and the conscription of child soldiers.

General Nkunda’s campaign began as a local insurgency aimed at redressing the grievances of a Tutsi minority that felt threatened by the aftershocks of the Rwandan genocide. But it has grown into a rebellion with a broad set of aims that include the removal of President Joseph Kabila, who was elected in 2006 after more than 40 years( 40 YEARS ) of tyranny and war in this country. “We have national ambitions,” General Nkunda declared, a hint of triumph in his voice. “We are talking about Congo.”

Some of this talk may be grandiose bluster from a man fond of referring to himself in the third person( WHO'D WANT TO BE HIM ) and who prefers to be photographed holding a scepter capped by a silver-plated eagle’s head. General Nkunda is despised by many in eastern Congo for his brutal tactics. He is also widely perceived as a proxy for Rwanda, a country whose meddling is largely detested by Congolese citizens. The general claims that he does not want to replace Mr. Kabila, merely to sit down and have direct talks.

But his forceful new challenge poses grave risks for Mr. Kabila, who is weaker than ever. The national army was routed on the battlefield, retreating virtually without a fight, pillaging and raping as it went.

The country’s economy, once fast-growing, is in shambles as the prices of minerals have plummeted in the global recession, and Mr. Kabila is increasingly unpopular. In eastern Congo, many people are unhappy at his failure to halt General Nkunda’s relentless military advance. In the west, where he has never been popular, he is under threat from political opponents who see his government as intolerant of dissent.

One by one, those who oppose him have felt the violent wrath of his security forces, according to human rights investigators and political analysts. A Human Rights Watch investigation found that 500 people had died and 1,000 had been detained in these crackdowns.

In the face of Mr. Kabila’s plummeting stature, General Nkunda has cultivated an image as a disciplined crusader bent on bringing order to the country. He dresses in sharp uniforms or flowing, immaculate white robes. He has claimed to be an evangelical minister and at times wears a pin that reads, “Rebels for Christ.” General Nkunda and his top commanders say their fighters have a commitment to discipline as well: drunkenness, looting and rape are offenses punishable by imprisonment and possibly death, according to senior rebel officers.

But in 2002, when General Nkunda was a commander in a different rebel group, he participated in the mass killing of 160 mutineers in the city of Kisangani, human rights groups say. According to Human Rights Watch, “Forces under Nkunda’s command bound, gagged, and executed twenty-eight persons and then put their bodies in bags weighted with stones and threw them off a Kisangani bridge.”

Two years later, his men took the city of Bukavu, and days of killing and rape followed, investigators say. Since 2005, when he formed his own rebel group, known as the National Congress for the Defense of the People, or C.N.D.P., his forces have carried out a number of massacres, according to human rights investigators, most recently at Kiwanja, in early November, where 150 people were executed.

In Nkunda territory, the general says, civilians are never harmed and live without fear of violence or looting. His men offer up the endless, Eden-like valleys around this town as proof. Terraced into rows as tidy as seats in an amphitheater, the land bespeaks a kind of ordered plenty.

But farmers here say they are forced to hand over a precious portion of their harvest to feed the fighters: 45 pounds of beans or grain, and as much as $20 a season in taxes, an enormous sum in a place where most people live on far less than a dollar a day.

General Nkunda said his rebellion was not motivated, like so many others fighting here, by plunder of Congo’s natural resources.

“I am not here for minerals,” he said. Indeed, there are almost no mines in the areas under his control, and General Nkunda has avoided getting directly involved in mining, fearing the taint of blood minerals that has stained virtually every group fighting here, including Congo’s own army.

But his fighters collect taxes on virtually every commercial vehicle and bushel of crops that come out of territory they control, according to residents and a United Nations report released last week. They even take a cut of the $300 permits sold to tourists wishing to see Congo’s rare mountain gorillas.

“The money goes to the rebels,” said one of the park rangers who monitors the animals. “None of it comes to us( UNREAL ).”

General Nkunda’s men also profit from Congo’s minerals. Thousands of tons of tin ore, coltan and other minerals pass through the border crossing here to Uganda, headed to Kenya’s Indian Ocean port, and the rebels take a slice of the duties and taxes collected here, United Nations officials say. General Nkunda denied this, saying his men sent all taxes to the government.

According to rebel officials, in Nkunda territory children are never made to wield Kalashnikov rifles and kill. But boys like Eric, who is now 16 but says he has been fighting with armed groups since he was kidnapped by Hutu militiamen at the age of 9, say General Nkunda’s rebellion forces hundreds of children to fight.

“The strategy they use is this,” he explained. “When they met children on the road, they ask them to help them carry their goods.”

The boys are then taken to training camps, given guns and taught to fight, Eric said. His eyes are wide in permanent surprise, and he said he had headaches that did not respond to medicine. Loud noises terrify him.

“Too many bombs,” he explained in a soft voice.

For two years, from 13 to 15, he said he fought with General Nkunda’s troops.

“Many of us were boys,” he said. “They would send us out first, then the men.”

He lives in a shelter for boys separated from their parents by the war. In the next bunk is his friend Fabrice, a 14-year-old former Mai Mai fighter who used to do battle with General Nkunda’s forces.

“I always felt bad to kill other children, because I knew they had been forced to fight just like me,” he said.

General Nkunda seems to have little trouble drawing new recruits, because each man is issued a uniform, a gun and training, unlike Congolese soldiers, who can go months without salaries. Some fighters are drawn to the rebels for ethnic reasons, but many others simply want to fight on the side that wins. His force is more disciplined, General Nkunda says, because they are fighting for a cause they believe in.

General Nkunda seems determined to play the role of statesman in waiting, receiving visiting diplomats and emissaries like a chief of state. He rejects the legitimacy of the Kabila government, so the United Nations appointed the former president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo, to cajole General Nkunda back to the negotiating table.

“What is democracy?” he mused, worrying his scepter, which has grown brassy over the years as his rebellion has flourished. “Democracy is not elections ( HERE WE GO ). Democracy is legitimacy. And legitimacy comes from what you are doing to your people( TERRORIZING THEM ).”

General Nkunda is all but certain to face an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for atrocities committed during his years fighting here, human rights investigators say, most recently in Kiwanja, where his men executed civilians and torched camps that housed 30,000 displaced people.

“Nkunda destroyed my life,” said Anorite Zawadi, 27, whose 8-year-old daughter disappeared when General Nkunda’s troops razed the camp in which her family lived. The girl has not been seen since.

“He has no mercy on us,” she continued. “He brings only death and sorrow.”

"the world could soon be living with a greater shame than the Rwandan genocide."

Thank God for Giles Foden in the Guardian:

"In 2001, I was in a bar in Kigoma, on the Tanzanian side of Lake Tanganyika. As I sipped my beer, I could hear the clipped tones of a South African speaking into a radio transceiver. He was ordering supplies for the United Nations peacekeeping mission known as Monuc, then operating out of Kalemie on the lake's Congolese side. At the time, Monuc's blue berets were just about managing to keep a lid on things in eastern Congo, but already the strain was showing.

Earlier that year Congolese president Laurent Kabila was shot by his bodyguard. He was replaced by his son Joseph, largely as a result of pressure brought to bear by Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe was one of a number of nations then taking part in the second Congo war (1998-2003). It was allying itself, along with Angola, Namibia, Chad and Sudan, with the Kabilas. On the other side, though sometimes fighting each other, were Uganda and Rwanda.

All sides in this many-phased conflict, which has claimed more than five million lives( PLEASE READ THIS NUMBER ) during the past decade, have been engaged in extraction of Congo's rich mineral deposits ( THAT'S RIGHT ). These have been a cause of bloodshed in the region right back to the 1960s, following Belgium's messy exit from its former colony. These riches are one reason why regional collaborations to end the conflict have so far failed; another is the historical effects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Since the official end of the second Congo war, fighting has been concentrated in the eastern region - the Congolese borders of Uganda, Rwanda and Sudan - with mainly Rwandan proxies fighting a circumstantial alliance of the Congolese army and Hutus. The most recent focus is on the territorial ambitions of "General" Nkunda, a Rwandan-backed warlord accused of massacring 150 civilians in Kivu last month. ( THIS IS A PROXY WAR )

Last week Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, wrote to European leaders asking the EU to intervene in Congo. The recent collapse of the Congolese army in the eastern region has caused hundreds of thousands of people to be displaced and an eruption of mass killings and rapes. The letter was an admission that Monuc had failed, having too few troops to deal with a conflict that could potentially again spread over an area as large as the EU itself.

The UN has authorised more troops, but they will not be deployed for at least four months. EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who met Ban yesterday in New York, has proposed four options to EU leaders: sending a rapid response "battle group" of 1,500 troops; dispatching within several months a 3,000-strong mission; simply reinforcing Monuc with forces from European countries; or achieving a concrete objective, such as securing the all-important Goma airport and other sites.

The second proposal has already been rejected by France. On Friday, Nicolas Sarkozy said African forces should reinforce Monuc. He also questioned whether an increase in the number of troops was the answer. Britain, too, is adamant the EU should not get involved, and Germany is not keen. These big EU players cite practical or tactical reasons, but underneath the shilly-shallying is a collective failure of moral leadership. The long-term lack of proper response to the scale of this fluid, deadly conflict is part of the same narrative that saw western governments fail to respond to genocide in Rwanda. It is eminently possible that a tragedy of a larger scale could now take place.( SOMETHING SHOULD BE DONE! )

Ordinary Africans are already suffering on a scale that dwarfs casualties from terrorist outrages and conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In particular, the harrowing reports of mass rape in the Congo demand a response - a military one. There are good political as well as human rights reasons why stopping mass rape should be the platform for this intervention. Women are the "glue" in central African society. They are the carers, the food providers. If many in several generations of women are damaged, injured or killed, the chances of a return to civil society are extremely slim.

In the immediate term, pressure should be put on the Rwandan leadership itself to rein in Nkunda; in the short term, Monuc should be supplemented by a large EU force; in the longer term, as eastern Congo seems ungovernable from Kinshasa, I see no option but the creation of a buffer state on the western shores of Lakes Kivu and Tanganyika. This could be achieved by regional forces with Monuc-EU backup. ( GO FOR IT! )

Geopolitically, the Great Lakes region is a hornet's nest - but unless someone puts smoke in that nest, the world could soon be living with a greater shame than the Rwandan genocide. ( THE WORLD WEARS SHAME WELL )

"The findings portray a complex proxy struggle between the nations"

There can be little doubt about what's going on in the Eastern part of the Congo. Lydia Polgreen in the NY Times:

"GOMA, Congo — A report to the United Nations Security Council by a panel of independent experts found evidence of links between senior officials of the Congolese and Rwandan governments and the armed groups fighting in eastern Congo. The findings portray a complex proxy struggle between the nations, with each using armed forces based in the area to pursue political, financial and security objectives in a region ravaged by conflict.

The report, which was based on months of independent research in the region, gives the clearest picture yet of the underpinnings of the fighting in eastern Congo, revealing a sordid network of intertwined interests in Congo and Rwanda that have fueled the continuing chaos. Tiny Rwanda and its vast neighbor to the west, Congo, have long been connected by a shared history of ethnic strife. In the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Hutu militias that carried out the killing fled into Congo, then known as Zaire."

This is like the Sudan. It's never going to end.

"In 1996, Rwanda backed a rebel force led by Laurent Kabila that ultimately toppled Congo’s longtime president, Mobutu Sese Seko. The initial aim had been to capture the Hutu fighters who had carried out the genocide, but the fighting devolved into a frenzy of plundering of Congo’s minerals, spawning a conflict that drew in half a dozen nations and left as many as five million people dead. Most died of hunger and disease.

The report’s findings on the current conflict are likely to strain already tense relations between the countries, providing ammunition for each. Congolese officials have accused Rwanda of supporting Tutsi rebels led by a renegade general from the same ethnic group as much of Rwanda’s establishment.

Rwanda has accused Congo’s government of colluding with an armed group led by some of the Hutu militia who carried out the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. These are the fighters who fled afterward to Congo and eventually formed a group known by its French abbreviation, the F.D.L.R. It preys on Congolese civilians and enriches itself with the country’s gold, tin and coltan, a mineral used in making the tiny processors in electronic equipment.

The independent experts found extensive evidence of high-level communication between the government of Rwanda and the Tutsi rebel group known as the Congress for the Defense of the People, led by the renegade general Laurent Nkunda, based on reviews of satellite phone records.

The report said that the calls were “frequent and long enough to indicate at least extensive sharing of information.”

In interviews, several of General Nkunda’s fighters described Rwandan soldiers’ helping the rebels inside Congo, according to the report. Rwandan soldiers also helped bring recruits, some of them children, to Congo’s border to fight in General Nkunda’s rebellion, the report said.

It also investigated how General Nkunda was paying for his militia, documenting hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments for taxes in territory that he controls. The report also named prominent business executives who had backed him financially.

Congo’s military, meanwhile, has been collaborating with the Hutu militia that is led by the authors of the Rwandan genocide, according to the report. The weak and undisciplined Congolese Army has frequently relied on help from these fighters in battling General Nkunda’s troops.

In exchange for ammunition, the militia fighters have helped in numerous offensives, the report said, citing by name several senior Congolese military officers who had handed over matériel to the Hutu forces. According to satellite phone records, senior military and intelligence figures in Congo have spoken frequently with top Hutu militia leaders.

“It is obvious that Rwandan authorities and Congolese authorities are aware of support provided to rebel groups,” Jason K. Stearns, the coordinator for the five-member panel that produced the report, said Friday at a news conference at the United Nations. “They haven’t done anything to bring it to an end.”

He said the Congolese government said that it had no policy to aid the Hutu militia but that there might be support from individual military commanders. Both governments said that telephone records showing conversations between officials and rebels did not constitute support, he added. "

In other words, it's a proxy war in Eastern Congo over minerals and money that's also a continuation of the effects of the Rwandan Genocide.

I refuse to believe that more can't be done.