The US Treasury sanctions imposed on Lawrence Kanyuka, an M23 high command official, together with Gen (Rtd) James Kabarebe did not come as a surprise but, one has to wonder, how will that solve DR Congo’s crisis?
To wit, the US administration has acted duplicitously with the sanctions, because they instead have chosen to massage the ego of the real trouble makers of DR Congo, criminal Tshisekedi and his cabal of looters.
It just beats everyone’s understanding how the US which had sanctioned the DR Congo regime for failure to address the mushrooming hundreds armed groups (by imposing an arms embargo on them) can then decide to penalize a member of Afc/M23 – a group that fights not only for the rights of the marginalized Congolese Tutsi communities, but also for survival itself.
There have been few struggles in world history more righteous than M23’s. But the sanctioners care very little about such things.
While Lawrence Kanyuka, the spokesperson of M23 might have been a successful businessman in both Europe and the US, he sacrificed all that to join other liberators to fight for a Congo that was for every Congolese regardless their ethnicity, and all in all to resist the appalling misrule of Tshisekedi and his cabal.
And now, after the capture of Goma and Bukavu by M23, the once chaotic situation of rampant killings, abductions, arbitrary arrests of Congolese Tutsis, and other crimes against humanity have vanished, like a bad dream. The Kivus now breath peace as the M23 administration works tirelessly to bring normalcy back.
Lawrence Kanyuka as a freedom fighter cannot be deterred by financial sanctions of any kind when such are the fruits of their struggle. It is simply nonsensical for the US or any other country to impose sanctions on an individual like Kanyuka, while saying completely nothing about the criminal regime in Kinshasa.
America should recollect some of the founding principles that led to its own war of liberation against the British. All they wanted was freedom from their colonial ruler.
Well, imagine them sanctioning people whose cause is as fundamental as Afc-M23!