As the fable “The Crow and the Fox” by French author Jean de la Fontaine goes, “One bright morning, a hungry Fox looking for a bite to eat, saw a Crow on the limb of a tree overhead. He took a second look, and the lucky Crow held a bit of cheese in her beak… ‘Good morning, beautiful creature!’ the Fox shouted. ‘What a charming creature you are, how your feathers shine!’ said the Fox. What a beautiful form and what splendid wings! Such a wonderful Bird should have a very lovely voice, since everything else about her is so perfect. Could she sing just one song? I know I should hail her Queen of Birds”, cried the Fox.
Listening to these flattering words, the Crow wanted very much to be called Queen of Birds. So she opened her beak wide to utter her loudest caw, and down fell the cheese straight into the Fox’s open mouth.”
‘Thank you’, said Master Fox sweetly, as he walked off: ‘you must learn that every flatterer lives at the expense of the one who listens to him'”, or as succinctly translated in Kiswahili from Goma: “Kwa duru kuko fête”!
On the advice of a string of flatterers hovering over Kinshasa, Tshisekedi marshalled all his minerals and funds to entice Americans to save his government from a humiliating defeat at the hands of M23.
Americans welcomed the serendipity. In a time of strife and scramble for strategic minerals, where China holds the lion’s share, such gift that fell in their lap could only come from a stupid crow…
They struggled however, to disabuse Tshisekedi of the notion that they will be deploying aircraft carriers, B-2 fighters, Marines and GIs, to die in the forests of Rucuru. So he recruited Erik Prince and his Black water, which is like getting an Alpha Romeo for the price of a Ferrari; they are all italian makes, but one has poor engineering and breaks down all the time – to put things in perspective, hundreds of millions of dollars and years of lobbying got the US to freeze Rwandan Generals Ruki’s Tesla stocks, Mubarakh’s Apple shares and Nyakarundi’s Nvidia actions – if they can find them… this is another French expression of “a Mountain that births a mouse”. No business was disrupted, and even US-Rwanda partnerships in healthcare and tech remain intact.
Now that he’s gotten his “Rwanda Sanctions”, it is time to revisit the “Washington Accords” and demand that Tshisekedi dismantle the FDLR, before Rwanda can lower its defensive measures. He won’t; he can’t. The FDLR is entrenched within the Congolese Army.
But there is another option: Having spent Five Billion Dollars (Finance Minister, Adolf “Hitler” Mozito’s numbers) in lobbying Washington, shopping for mercenaries and drones (and mostly looting), mediators will struggle to detox Kinshasa of the high that it is capable of defeating M23 militarily. But we are all willing to let Tshisekedi test that theory.
We expect an all-out attack on M23 positions in the coming days, with more displaced people and more loss of life. Once Kinshasa is beaten again, and M23 has collected most of the equipment, captured strategic towns of Kisangani and Kalemi, all parties will finally sit at the table in Washington and Doha and force Kinshasa to sign off on the “Federal Republic of Kivu” – the new M23 name!
Kinshasa might retain nominal powers over the brand new Federal State that is fully rehabilitated in the international community, with executive powers, banks opened and capable of autonomously conducting business with American firms, keen to buy minerals from Kivu. Possible land swaps and the exchange of politicians might intervene. The Congolese Revolutionary Army (M23-s military wing) – now reformed as Kivu army – will remain in situ, securing its territory and offering security guarantees to Rwanda, which will finally lower its defensive measures.
That will be the end of the War, at least with M23. I can’t speak for the upper north, in Ituri Province, where CODECO and ADF-Nalu, two violent militias, continue to kill in thousands, away from anyone’s attention.