The Wizard of Oz is a fantasy film, made some time in the 1930s, in America. For anyone familiar with it, an article in Foreign Affairs magazine (FA), by American academic, Jason Stearns, immediately brings the film to mind.
The ostensibly “great and wonderful Wizard of Oz,” knows all, is feared and admired in equal measure, but most of all, he is who must be obeyed. Until that is, a puppy disappears behind the curtain where the Wizard sits, his wonders to perform. When the main character of the film, whose puppy it is, follows it, she finds that the great wizard, is a timorous old man, performing clever tricks, to fool the gullible. No magic.
Like the great Oz, Stearns is highly regarded as an expert authority, on the Great Lakes region of Africa, especially, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). That is at least, by anyone not curious enough to peak behind the curtain. He is a senior fellow at the Centre for International Cooperation (CIC), which is housed at New York University (NYU), and is founder and chair of the advisory board, of the Congo Research Group (CRG).
It is fair to say that the now Assistant Professor of International Studies, at Simon Fraser University, is accepted in north America, in particular, and the West generally, as the font of all wisdom on the DRC. His article in Foreign Affairs, a magazine published by America’s Council for Foreign Relations (CFR), will therefore, at the very least, be taken at face value, as well founded.
Look again at, The Forgotten War in Congo – To Stop the Growing Crisis in the Country’s East, the West Must Pressure Rwanda, however, and it does not bear close scrutiny. A cursory glance behind the curtain, is enough to show the great expert, busily contorting the facts, and even engaging in the odd fabrication here and there, to suit a hackneyed narrative. The long piece can be summarised in a couple of sentences: two African states are at the centre of a thirty-year crisis, and therefore the West must step in to bring them to heel. To do this, the West must “pressure” the main culprit, who, according to Stearns is Rwanda.
Anyone who follows the current affairs of the region, will recognise the DRC President Felix Tshisekedi’s words, virtually verbatim, throughout almost the entire article.
According to Stearns, the thirty-year conflict, has had little global attention, because, “since its inception, the war in Congo has excelled at evading international recognition.” Predictably tendentious, he loses no time, in condemning the M23 rebel movement in the DRC. “Few people noticed when the M23 Movement…rounded up and executed 171 civilians, in November 2022.”
This is in reference to the so called “Kishishe Massacre,” which never happened, not even those who allege it believe there was ever any massacre. That did not however, prevent the DRC government, and its supporters, like stearns, trying to convince the entire world of the claim.
The facts about Kishishe, are that less than ten people died there. Even then, almost all of them combatants in a battle between the rebel group, and the Congolese army, which, as always was supported by a plethora of armed groups, including the genocidal Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
Stearns’ claim of 171 civilians “executed,” is among several clearly imagined figures, bandied about at the time. Now 300, from the DRC government, who immediately decided that was not shocking enough, and increased it to over 300, then it suddenly became around 200, with some people allegedly taken and held as “sex slaves,” now back to 300. Everyone who claimed the “massacre” it seemed, produced their own figures, and now Stearns announces his own.
What is interesting is that rebel group’s repeated invitation to the UN mission in the DRC, MONUSCO, to go to the area, only a few kilometres away from its headquarters, and conduct a thorough investigation, was never taken up. And Stearns is careful not to mention Kishishe, simply throwing out the bizarre, almost non sequitur accusation, that 171 civilians were “executed.”
It should be noted that M23, fights mainly around its own communities, among the civilians it is accused of murdering and imprisoning as “sex slaves”, would be their own friends, relatives, their loved ones.
On the other hand, there is ample evidence that for civilians in the DRC, the safest places to be, are those under the controlled of the rebel group. Stearns is however, not the only Western commentator keen to label M23, as an abuser of human rights, in the face of evidence to the contrary. It now seems an editorial requirement, to preface any mention of M23, with the word, “murderous.”
The reason generally becomes clear in the very next sentence, which is always a variation of the claim that the group is supported and armed by Rwanda. The inference we are presumably supposed to draw from the claim, is that Rwanda, therefore, is responsible for the murderousness of the group. But beyond the oft repeated vague accusations of Rwanda, “stealing” Congolese minerals, we are rarely told why, for thirty years, Rwanda would want to destabilise its neighbour.
Rarely have these accusations been more absurdly levelled than in Stearns’ article.
“The group is largely funded and trained by Rwanda, which sees the organization as a way to project power and gain access to Congo’s resources.” The offhanded attempt at justifying the accusation, is so crudely preposterous as to insult the meanest intelligence.
Stearns is far too well informed about the DRC, to believe a word of what he says, a fact that comes throught in a way he strangles the facts, to the point that large chunks of his long article make little sense. But for him, as for many others in Western media, adhering to the facts in the DRC, come secondary to the all important obligation to appease Felix Tshisekedi.
And Stearns should perhaps be excused. The West’s policy as far as the DRC crisis is concerned, is to at all costs, avoid acknowledgement of the underlying causes. It cannot be easy for a researcher, to keep dodging the reality on the ground, however much he is onboard with that clear intent to deceive.
The constant reference to Congolese minerals is perhaps the best clue to why the West, and its mouthpieces, like Stearns, would rather see Rwanda and Rwandans, condemned to global isolation, than let slip any acknolwledgement of the actual reasons, why the people of the DRC, have been sentenced to a hellish existence, for the last three decades.
There is, it seems, a faustian pact, between every Congolese government and the Western nations. The West will support whoever is in power in Congo, in return for being allowed to plunder Congo’s fantastic natural wealth.
In July 1994, this pact was afforded an extra veil, behind which it could continue to be concealed.
When the forces of the now main governing party in Rwanda, the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), defeated the last of the genocidal forces, responsible for the 1994 Rwanda Genocide against Tutsi, the genocidal establishment was helped by their French backers, to escape into the DRC, or Zaire, as it was then named.
Once in Zaire, they continued to be armed by then French president, Francois Mitterrand’s government, beginning a war of insurgency against Rwanda, after, adopting the name, the FDLR, or Democractic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.
In 1996, after two years of calling upon the international community to reign in the Kinshasa government from supporting the FDLR, in vain, an exasperated Rwanda, took the decision in its own hands, and sent troops into Zaire. It is that initial incursion into what is now the DRC, that successive Congolese governments, have used as an excuse to scapegoat Rwanda, for the country’s instability.
And like almost every other Western commentator, be they journalists, academics or even politicians and diplomats, Stearns carefully toes the Kinshasa government’s line on M23. Rather than describe the rebel group as what they are, Congolese taking up arms against a decades’ old persecution of their communities by successive Congolese governments, he implies that the group is Rwandan, with no roots in the DRC.
As for the war in Congo being “complex”, and “excellent at evading international recognition,” Stearns himself is a big contributor to the attempt to complicate it, and can be part of the answer to resolving those two challenges.
From his exulted position, as the West’s most listened to expert on Congo, he could acknowledge the causes of the conflict, rather than seek to divert attention away from the facts. There is little if anything “complex” about the DRC crisis.
There are clearly laid out grievances from M23, who are ready to end hostilities, and sit down to negotians with the government of Felix Tshisekedi, with no preconditions. The complexities and evading of international recognition, arise only with the West’s pointing of accusing fingers at Rwanda, in an effort to divert attention away from the actual causes of the crisis, and pervert the truth, that as Rwanda has consistently insisted, the causes of the crisis, are internal to the DRC. But it suits the West to present the crisis as “complex.”
For several years, Stearns has held sway over the disinformation on DRC. He has influenced almost all UN Group of Experts’ reports, while he himself remained discreetly in the background. He might have been best advised to have remained in the shadows.
With this almost childishly transparent anti Rwanda article, presumably written in part to appease Tshisekedi, he has rather drawn the curtain, to show that the much vaunted wizadry, is little more than a venal readiness to sell academic integrity to the highest bidder.
