Word: rwandans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Congo Cooperation Amid Chaos Nearly 1,500 Rwandan troops have joined the Congolese army to hunt down Hutu militia leaders suspected of orchestrating the 1994 genocide against the nation's Tutsi tribes. The alliance further undermines the authority of Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, whose forces have split since fighting between Nkunda's militia and Congolese soldiers broke out in August. More than 250,000 villagers have been displaced by the fighting; Human Rights Watch reports that 650 people were killed in December alone. But some analysts say the region's violence has less to do with tribal conflict...
Between 1,500 and 2,000 Rwandan troops invaded the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday on a mission sanctioned by the Congolese government to wipe out ethnic Hutu militias. Lambert Mende, Congo's Information Minister, told Reuters that his government had invited the Rwandans onto Congolese soil as "observers" for an offensive against Rwandan Hutu rebels, which was expected to last about two weeks. "The operations are beginning. We have invited Rwandan officers with their security contingents for their safety. They are observers ... The operations to disarm the FDLR [Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda] are planned...
...invasion is perhaps the most dramatic evidence yet that no military force in Congo is capable of resolving the country's problems. The roots of the war in Congo date back to 1994. That was the year the FDLR, which had helped carry out the Rwandan genocide, fled over the border into the hills of eastern Congo. Rwandan forces under the command of Paul Kagame, who would later become Rwanda's President, pursued the FDLR...
...angry denial. "This report is a calculated move to shift blame away from the government of DRC [Congo] and the international community - both of whom have failed to resolve the conflict in the eastern DRC despite numerous bilateral, regional and international initiatives in the last 14 years," read a Rwandan government statement. Tuesday's invasion can be seen as a follow-up to that argument: Rwanda, frustrated by Congolese and U.N. failure, is now trying to end the war itself, and by the by remove the ostensible reason for Nkunda's rebels to exist...
...perpetrate them. In 1998 the war sucked at least six neighboring African countries into what quickly became a smash and grab for Congo's timber and minerals. The U.N. has also had to deal with a series of scandals concerning sex abuse and gun running by its soldiers. The Rwandan mission may be aimed at bringing peace. But they are not coming in peace, and in Congo that has always led to more war. See pictures of Congo on the brink...