By David Himbara

The military chiefs of Great Lakes countries (Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Tanzania and DRC) meeting at Goma witnessed General Paul Kagame’s usual manoeuvres. The Rwandan strongman sought to manipulate his way into playing a direct role in disarming militias in Eastern DRC.

Kagame missed the irony of asking the Congolese to invite Rwandan military on their soil. Besides invading DRC twice, fighting with Uganda in DRC, and sponsoring militias there, Rwanda was named by the UN a major transit for looting DRC minerals in June 2019.

DRC rebuked Kagame’s attempts to get his military officially invited to DRC

DRC said no to Kagame in no uncertain terms on October 27, 2019:

”We do not need armies to cross and come to fight with us…The pooling of resources is the sharing of information (and) to act simultaneously, each army on its territory, eradicating, conducting operations to combat foreign armed groups who foist the eastern part of the country. We do not need these armies to cross and come to fight at our country…These armies will be in the areas contained in their territories, in the border zone, each on its territory, fighting the common threat that goes from one country to another. It has never been a question of bringing external armies to the Congolese territory to eradicate the threat.”

There you go, General Kagame. We, of course, know that your special forces are already in DRC. But DRC won’t give you the pleasure of officially inviting you to invade it again.