After the protracted Inter-Congolese talks in Durban, the war in the D R Congo rages on, in part thanks to one man, and some outside forces. Even as the interlocutors were debating about a peaceful outcome to this 4-year war, Rwandan and Ugandan backed armies and rebels were slaughtering Congo­lese civilians. Indeed, these two na­tions, acting free of censure by the In­ternational community, continue to ravage Congolese towns, villages, and communities, killing scores of civil­ians, about 3 million and counting. As of late, the International Court at The Hague rejected a request by the Con­golese government to call the Rwandan presence in the DR Congo an invasion. This strong, but accurate language would have increased the pressure on Rwanda to disengage in the Congo, and in effect put a halt to this senseless war. The rejection by the courts is nothing short of a travesty, and an in­sult to the Congolese people.

How can two men do so much evil, but yet go on with impunity? I am talking about Mrs. Kagame, President of Rwanda, and chief murderer, and Museveni, President of Uganda. They have brought nothing but instability and war to the Great Lakes Region, in central Africa. Their rise to power, as unconventional as it was, was imbued with a sense of revenge, and a calcu­lated intention to dominate the region. by any means necessary. With those evil objectives, Mr. Kagame proceeded to put into place a killing machine, whose initial purpose was to rid Rwanda of the so-called génocidaires whom he accused the D R Congo of harboring; a noble cause in and of it­self, but one that has proven to be diffi­cult, if not a failure altogether. It is a difficult task, because the plan has changed along the way. It is no longer about capturing those who perpetrated the 1994 genocide; it is about plunder­ing the D R Congo. Maybe that was the intended goal, from the outset.

Since 1998, close to 3 million people have died, in a senseless war, fueled by the governments of Rwanda, and Uganda. Innocent, defenseless chil­dren, young men and women, most of them already deprived, the people of the DR Congo are being butchered mercilessly. What is taking place in eastern Congo is despi­cable, and abundantly cruel. Mr. Ka­game has lost the war against the peo­ple who instigated the genocide, but he is about to lose the one he started in the Congo. Now, that is a blatant blunder for somebody who was once lionized as a great military strategist, a man of vision. Well it seems that vision was fixated on the Congolese riches, and his self-enrichment. After all, the President of Rwanda is nothing other than your run-of-­the-mill dictator, whose genetic coding is not far apart from the likes of Mobutu, Bokasa, and so on. However, there is a distin­guishing aspect; those other dicta­tors had a scrap of common sense, in that they never invaded a country that was 100 times bigger, and almost 10 times more populated. To win such a war, there are some basic elements that are needed, such as some mighty military powers, a large sum of money to support the war expenses, or friends in high places. Mr. Ka­game seems to have most of these things, but he lacks vision, an ele­ment for which he was praised by western leaders, and those friends in high places we mentioned ear­lier. If this war is to-be won, the leaders of Rwanda, and Uganda left out an important variable in their equations (humanum est er­rare...).