On Monday 16, a convoy of the East African Regional Force (EACRF) that was on routine civilian protection patrols in their designated buffer zone was waylaid at Rukoro, along the Rutshuru-Bunagana road by the coalition of FARDC/FDLR, Mai-Mai, Nyatura and mercenaries who have since adapted the collective name of ‘Wazalendo”.
The hail of bullets and bombs left a number of the regional peacekeepers injured and had to be evacuated for emergency treatment in Uganda.
However, nobody believed that these attacks were a random occurrence, considering that Tshisekedi and top members of his cabinet had made hostile utterances against the regional force at different forums.
The hostility of the Kinshasa regime towards the EACRF is motivated by their burning hanker for widespread ethnic cleansing in eastern Congo, specifically North Kivu province.
Therefore, the Kinshasa regime views the EACRF (and the Luanda and Nairobi peace processes) as a spanner in the works instead of their planned heinous ethnic cleaning specifically targeting the pastoralist Tutsi and Hema communities domiciled in North Kivu.
With the EACRF (and consequently the peace roadmap spearheaded by regional leaders) out of the way, the Kinshasa regime calculated that they would have a free hand to mobilize the collective ‘Wazalendo” coalition machinery to massacre all Tutsi and Hema communities in North Kivu.
Once this objective is achieved, Tshisekedi would then embark on the implementation of his long-held objective of supporting FDLR to attack Rwanda to finish the genocide project which they were forced to cut short and flee to Zaire in 1994.