Obama’s State Department Unfairly Condemns U.S. Ally Rwanda

Secretary of State John Kerry is coming to the United Nations on July 25th to lead a special session of the UN Security Council on Africa’s Great Lakes region, which includes the neighboring countries of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. In typical Obama administration fashion, the State Department has already chosen to bash our ally Rwanda this week, taking sides in a conflict involving rival rebel groups in the DRC.

Jen Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, charged Rwanda earlier this week of continuing to actively support the rebel group known as M23 and called upon Rwanda to immediately end any support for M23. Missing from her statement was any acknowledgement, much less condemnation, of support by elements of the Congolese Army for the Hutu rebel group known as the Forces Démocratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR). FDLR includes former genocidaires (people who took part in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda), who fled Rwanda in 1994 to avoid prosecution for the horrific crimes they committed against Rwanda’s Tutsi population. The FDLR has been operating in eastern Congo, under various names, since 1994 and continues to commit a variety of grave human rights abuses. Ms. Psaki cited a Human Rights Watch investigation accusing Rwanda of providing ammunition, food and training to M23. Human Rights Watch also alleged that the M23 rebels were responsible for executions, rapes and forcible recruitment of men and boys while receiving support from Rwanda. It touched much more lightly on the FDLR, although it did acknowledge that FDLR has “carried out horrific abuses against civilians in eastern Congo, including killings and rapes.”

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Psaki called the findings of the Human Rights Watch report, published Monday, "a very powerful case" although she was very selective in what she used. Her selective reliance on portions of the Human Rights Watch report to support its castigation of an ally in the volatile African Great Lakes region, a country that still bears the scars of the 1994 genocide, is disturbing to say the least. The FDLR’s human rights abuses, and evidence of collaboration between the Congolese army and the FDLR, were apparently not important enough for the State Department spokesperson to mention, even though they were mentioned in the Human Rights Watch report that she cited. In June of 2012, Human Rights Watch provided a more graphic description of the FDLR’s atrocities in a press release, reminiscent of some of the FDLR members’ genocidal attacks against Rwandan civilians in 1994:

“Human Rights Watch documented numerous deliberate killings of civilians, including many women, children, and the elderly, by FDLR fighters, who killed their victims with machetes and hoes. FDLR fighters also pillaged and burned homes, sometimes with their victims locked inside. Rape and sexual violence were widespread… FDLR fighters with machetes and knives hacked to death dozens of civilians, including numerous children.”

Human Rights Watch’s most recent report focuses largely on Rwanda’s alleged active support for the M23 rebel group and M23’s alleged human rights abuses, repeated in rote fashion by the State Department spokesperson. Human Rights Watch and the State Department ignore the positive steps that Rwanda has taken with regard to any ongoing relationship it is alleged to have with M23. They are also out of step with the United Nations’ latest report of its group of experts, issued in June. The UN report, while noting evidence it gathered of “continuous support to M23 from within Rwanda,” made a point of adding that such support was “limited.” The UN report also pointed out that Rwanda had taken steps to neutralize M23 leader Gen. Bosco Ntaganda. Furthermore, the UN report did not dispute the Rwandan government’s claim that “upon their arrival on the territory of Rwanda, all M23 combatants were disarmed.” The UN group of experts report concluded that “M23 recruitment in Rwanda has decreased since the dismantling of Ntaganda’s recruitment network.” As for Ntaganda himself, he was transferred on March 22, 2013 from Kigali in Rwanda to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague, after he voluntarily surrendered in response to arrest warrants from the ICC on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. In a press release issued at the time, the ICC noted that this was first time a suspect has surrendered himself voluntarily to be in the ICC’s custody, which “would not have been possible without the support of the Rwandese authorities.” Moreover, the group of UN experts stated in their report that they had not documented any instances, since the fall of Goma in November 2012, of full Rwandan Defense Force (RDF) units support to M23, although the experts had received information that M23 commanders have regularly met with RDF officers. The State Department’s condemnation of Rwanda lacks any nuanced view of the situation as it exists today. It overlooks the constructive steps by Rwanda in helping to reduce violence, including reduced support to M23 and assistance in turning over the M23 commander to the ICC. The State Department spokesperson’s statement was also so one-sided that it failed to note the escalating violence by the FDLR rebel genocidaires, supported by the Congolese army whose troops the United States has helped to train. The UN report of experts stated in its report that “the FDLR carried out three attacks on Rwandan soil in late 2012 and mid-2013.” The group of experts also found evidence, based on reports from a Congolese army officer and local leaders from a town less than 10 miles from Goma, of “a pattern of collaboration” between Congolese army units and the FDLR. It cited sources within the Congolese army who claimed that there were regular meetings and exchanges of operational information as well as the supply of ammunition by Congolese army soldiers to the FDLR. For its part, the Congolese army, with the acquiescence if not tacit support of the enhanced UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC known as MONUSCO that is helping the army disarm rebel groups, is reported to have just recently launched bombs that landed on Rwandan territory. MONUSCO has focused its attention primarily on defeating M23, apparently looking the other way when it comes to the Congolese army’s collaborators, the FDLR. We are likely to hear much in Secretary of State Kerry’s remarks to the Security Council on Thursday regarding the Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework for the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Region, signed last February in Addis-Ababa, under the auspices of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were signatories to that document. Will Kerry single out Rwanda for allegedly violating the Framework agreement by virtue of its alleged relationship with M23, as his State Department’s spokesperson has done? Will Kerry overlook the escalating violence against Rwanda in which the Congolese army and possibly MONUSCO are complicit? Most importantly, will Kerry condemn the Congolese army for collaborating with the FDLR rebel genocidaires as well as the genocidaires themselves, who seek to renew their campaign of genocide against innocent Rwandans - a campaign which they have been practicing on Congolese men, women and children? The Obama administration’s sorry track record in bashing our allies and taking sides in conflicts it does not fully understand provides little cause for optimism.