Who is going after FDLR and who not?
It has been roughly four weeks after a six-month ultimatum for Rwandan FDLR rebels to voluntarily disarm expired, until – on Thursday 29th January – military operations against the group were announced. In the slipstream of the visit of DRC’s army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Etumba, concrete announcements were made that FARDC will head … Continue reading
Electoral gamble fuels protests in Kinshasa and elsewhere
(Italic paragraphs added on January 25 and 26) As the Congolese government moves on to finalise changes in the country’s electoral law, a series of demonstrations and concomitant clashes between opposition and police forces have unleashed in Kinshasa (and other towns like Goma and Bukavu) over the past couple of days. Media and human rights … Continue reading
Ayiti. A thought and a retrospective.
Today marks the fifth anniversary of the disastrous earthquake that countless people and hopes in Haiti, a country that has not had an easy stand even before it was struck by such unthinkable catastrophe. It has been almost five years too, that I have not been there myself, so I am not going to give … Continue reading
Multiple surrenders of commanders cast a big blow on Raia Mutomboki
As international media focuses attention on a – finally – looming military offensive against the Rwandan FDLR rebels (Simone Schlindwein has a very recommendable backgrounder on this), the increasing series of surrenders in sequence to FARDC operations against various factions of Raia Mutomboki is remarkable (for two concise backgrounders on what Raia Mutomboki is – … Continue reading
A dead deadline? January 2015 and the FDLR are still around
Roughly a week ago a much debated disarmament deadline passed for the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR), the infamous rebel outfit that regroups the remnants of certain Rwandan genocide culprits that ventured into eastern Congo as ex-FAR and interahamwe two decades ago. While political rhetoric has been strong and the internet-based propaganda … Continue reading
suluhu.org 