British Foreign Secretary David Lammy on Saturday February 22, 2025, met with Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) President Félix Tshisekedi
Whatever their other faults, it was always possible to rely on Britain’s political class, for sufficient self awareness to strike the right tone on most issues, even if it were a hypocritical keeping up of appearances. The crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), however, has peeled away any such subtlety, exposing a readiness to sacrifice adherence to the facts, at the altar of naked self interest.
David Lammy, Britain’s Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development affairs (FCDO), inadvertently or otherwise, misreads the crisis in the DRC, and on that misinformed basis, proclaims what should happen to resolve it, and threatens “action” against any who did not follow his instructions.
“The humanitarian needs in the DRC are critical. Close to a million people have been displaced by the recent M23 offensive,” he said. “Hundreds of thousands are in desperate need of life saving support…The UK will support those committed to ending this conflict, and we will take action against those who continue to fuel it…”
His proclamation was delivered against a background of generic pictures of immiserated displaced people in tented accommodation, medical personnel attending to malnourished, emaciated toddlers. It did not seem to matter that the pictures were not from the DRC. They served to illustrate the underlying message that the UK, the West, in general, were riding in to save the day.
But what if, rather than the saviours on white chargers, the West was in fact, more akin to any one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse? What if it is Mr Lammy’s type of intervention that fuels the crisis?
Few crises are more straightforward or have been more needlessly drawn out, than the DRC conflict. Yet the strenuous effort to depict it as “complex,” with complexity becoming a veil behind which agendas are rather poorly hidden.
In an apparent effort to appease the DRC’s disastrous President, Felix Tshisekedi, who holds the key to the country’s vast mineral wealth, the West is determined to completely ignore the root causes of the crisis, and instead echo everyone of Tshisekedi’s outlandish claims, usually against Rwanda. It is a stance that is arguably adding to the perpetuation of the conflict.
The AFC/M23, are, lest we forget, a Congolese rebel movement, which came into being to fight against the persecution of their Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese community. Up until 1994, this community had resigned itself to discrimination, almost becoming inured to it.
After 1994, with the defeat of the genocidal establishment by the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) forces, the persecution in Zaire, as the DRC was then known, would intensify, taking on a new malignant tenor.
With the support of their French backers, the planners and perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide Against Tutsi, in Rwanda, were escorted into the DRC. They included the genocidal army, the Interahamwe militia, who spearheaded the mass murders. They crossed into DRC, fully armed, and carrying anything else they could loot from Rwanda.
Once inside the DRC, they were installed along the border with Rwanda, from where they launched attacks, as the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), with the declared objective of returning to Rwanda, in their words, to “finish where they had left off.”
Beginning with Mobutu Sese Seko, successive Congolese heads of state, brought the FDLR into the Congolese body politic. From that privileged position, they began to infuse genocide ideology into Congolese society. The hatred would emanate from state house to pervade the entire country, especially the East, ancestral home of the Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese. Today, barely an eye brow is raised, as people are burned alive and cannibalized, on grounds of ethnicity.
What we know today as AFC/M23, began as CNDP (National Congress for the Defence of the People), as an armed response to the genocidal attacks and murders, against the Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese.
Like other Western powers, the UK has had the best part of thirty years, to grasp that the Congolese state’s embracing of the FDLR, with its ideology of genocide, is as much anything else, at the root of the crisis in the DRC.
Yet, David Lammy’s speech was as detached from the reality of the DRC, as the pictures he borrowed from elsewhere, to use as a backdrop to the speech. The UK is wedded to a Western narrative that seems driven by a specific agenda. They are convinced their interests are best served by keeping Felix Tshisekedi happy, irrespective of how absurd may be his position.
A much repeated absurdity, is that Congolese sovereignty is under threat. “DRC sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected. I’ve spoken to both President Tshisekedi and President Kagame, about how we achieve that,” Lammy announced.
The problem with that statement is of course, that there is no threat to the territorial integrity of the DRC, least of all from Rwanda. It is little more than a refrain from Tshisekedi, to distract from the fact that sooner or later, he is going to have to negotiate with AFC/M23. Whatever anyone’s view of them, the AFC/M23 rebel alliance is Congolese, and as such, their advance cannot be said to be a threat to Congo’s territorial integrity.
Ironically, any threat to territorial integrity is not against the DRC, but from the DRC. On several occasions, Congo has shelled Rwandan territory causing not only damage to property, but loss of life. Most recently, sixteen were killed in the Western district of Rubavu, mostly by artillery fire, which also caused significant damage to the town.
These attacks have been preceded by bellicose anti Rwanda vitriol by different members of the Congolese government, including the head of state, who threatened to invade Rwanda, vowing to bring about “regime change.”
In response to the attacks, both verbal and artillery, Rwanda has drawn up defensive measures, without which the attacks on Rubavu, would have claimed many more lives, and caused greater damage.
“There must be a ceasefire now,” Mr Lammy demands, “the people of this region deserve to in live in Security.” Really? AFC/M23 might say. It is precisely because their communities have for decades been denied the opportunity to live in peace and security, that they took up arms. As for a ceasefire, AFC/M23, unilaterally declared one two years ago, and moved against government forces, only when attacked. With almost every offensive, the government lost more territory to the rebels. AFC/M23 continue to call for a negotiated settlement, while the Congolese President has declared he would never negotiate with them.
An end to the conflict is clear. It is a negotiated settlement between the Congolese state and the AFC/M23 rebel alliance. The fighting has continued because Congo’s President believes he can achieve a military victory. To that end he has put together a coalition that includes over two hundred armed groups, now Christened Wazalendo, the FDLR, Southern African troops, led by South Africa, European mercenaries, and others. By amplifying his anti Rwanda diatribes, the UK is emboldening him to continue down the road of conflict, rather than negotiation.
