The Democratic Republic of Congo has earned the reputation of being the regional hotbed of insecurity since independence, but the advent of Tshisekedi has elevated the insecurity to unprecedented proportions after legitimizing criminal armed groups.
Tshisekedi has legitimized armed groups into ‘reservists’ and ‘self-defense groups’. While the various foreign and local armed groups operated in different areas under different warlords, Tshisekedi’s puppet Parliament passed a law that established the so-called reservists. They are made of FDLR genocidaires and a host of other murderous armed groups that have been perpetrating crimes with impunity against innocent Congolese citizens. By legitimizing criminal armed groups outlawed by the region and the International Community, Tshisekedi is not only destabilizing his own country but the entire region.
The crisis in the eastern DRC is Tshisekedi’s own creation. While Tshisekedi desperately seeks to attribute the out-of-control insecurity in the east and the rest of DRC to his neighbors, the blame falls squarely at his feet. The world has come to realize that a crisis-torn eastern region is beneficial to the regime ruler’s long-held intention to cling on to power.
For instance, the incorporation of the FDLR into the national army is a ticking time bomb. Despite repeated appeals to divorce himself from the FDLR, Tshisekedi went ahead with his unholy alliance with criminals whom the entire world knows as remnants of the force that committed the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. By working with them, Tshisekedi through his army FARDC aims to embolden and strengthen their resolve to attack Rwanda and commit another genocide. As a result, FDLR, and other armed groups have wreaked havoc, killing, raping, and pillaging resources.
The much-touted ‘a war for sovereignty’ plunged DRC deeper into crisis. In what the Kinshasa regime’s propaganda machine has crafted as ‘a war for sovereignty’ Tshisekedi has made available lethal arms to the armed groups for use in their murderous operations in eastern Congo. The association of the armed groups with FDLR inculcated the genocide ideology into the fabric of these groups, and have since turned to ethnic cleansing of the Congolese Tutsi community, which Tshisekedi has enforced through policy implementation.
As a consequence, with a leader like Tshisekedi, the Congolese people don’t need neighboring countries to cause insecurity in order to destabilize the country.