Congo’s military and diplomatic efforts under Congolese ruler Felix Tshisekedi are unraveling. Once again, many Congolese turn on public officials and military leaders, blaming those around him, while refusing to hold the inept commander-in-chief accountable.
His diplomatic push in Washington was a fiasco. There was no one-on-one meeting with US President Donald Trump; no American troops sent to his regime’s rescue, and no mineral deal without a peace agreement signed in Doha. Massad Boulos, senior adviser to US President Donald Trump delivered the crushing news: Doha was the missing piece, the place where the root causes of the conflict must finally be addressed.
Rather than acknowledge Tshisekedi’s poor strategic choices, critics spun his failures into conspiracy theories, claiming Boulos had been bought.
Meanwhile, bad news continued to pile up. No credible actor gave weight to Tshisekedi’s invented genocide, the so-called “genocost”. His own delegation slept through his rambling speech in an almost empty UN room.
Presidents Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and Emmerson Mnangagwa of Zimbabwe were said to be furious at Tshisekedi for ignoring their pleas to drop trumped up charges against former president Joseph Kabila. Through his own choices, Tshisekedi has become increasingly isolated. Who else is to blame?
Tshisekedi should have known the war was lost the moment SADC forces, especially South African troops, decided to pull out. Instead, he doubled down on the military option.
He relied on an embattled Burundian army plagued by internal divisions. Distrustful of Tutsi soldiers, Burundi deployed inexperienced imbonerakure militias to make its combat units more ethnically homogeneous. Yet President Evariste Ndayishimiye ensured that Tshisekedi paid the same price for lower combat effectiveness. Who else could be responsible for that?
As expected, Kinshasa’s offensives to retake Bukavu and Goma turned into panicked retreats. Tshisekedi’s ragged forces, supported by militias including the genocidal FDLR and by mercenaries, were pushed back by AFC/M23 counteroffensives on every front. Is this surprising ?
Under Tshisekedi’s watch, funds for military equipment are embezzled, fictitious troops are paid, FARDC and Wazalendo elements repeatedly fire on each other, units lack ammunition and food, and civilians are looted to feed militias. Yet Tshisekedi persists in pursuing a military solution on the back of an army and militias that kill and rob the very people they claim to protect.
At this point, Congolese cannot keep blaming only those around him. Tshisekedi alone should bear responsibility for steering Congo toward the abyss.