THE WASHINGTON AGREEMENT ALREADY OBSOLETE: RWANDA VIOLATES THE US-MADE PEACE IN REAL TIME
Under the chandeliers of the State Department, Donald Trump shook hands with Félix Tshisekedi and congratulated Paul Kagame. The « Washington Peace Agreement » was signed with great fanfare. The American president spoke of a « historic miracle, » a « new era for the Great Lakes, » a definitive peace. Cameras from around the world immortalized the moment, in front of international witnesses.
The Congolese, for their part, held their breath.
Six days later, the miracle was already dead.
At dawn on December 10, on the hills around Uvira.Rwandan bombardments rained down on the city of Uvira. Soldiers from the M23 – commanded, equipped, and paid by Kigali – advanced in the open.
Sange fell, Luvungi fell, the outskirts of Uvira were within cannon range. More than 200,000 civilians fled in a matter of hours. Children were executed in villages, hospitals were targeted, houses were burned. Rwanda no longer even hid its troops: RDF uniforms were filmed with faces uncovered.
The agreement that the United States had extracted, touted, and guaranteed was being violated in real time, before the eyes of the world.
And Washington remained silent. Or almost: a laconic statement spoke of « deep concerns. » Nothing more.Yet it was America that convinced Kinshasa to accept this text. It was America that convinced Tshisekedi that Kagame would « play the game » this
was America that dangled the carrot of regional economic integration and the stick of freezing funding if the DRC refused to sign.
It was America again that, for thirty years, turned a blind eye to UN reports, satellite photos, testimonies, and mass graves, because Rwanda was a « strategic partner. »
Result: the paper signed on December 4 didn’t even last a week. Rwanda used the Washington ceremony as a smoke screen to prepare its final offensive on Uvira.
And the United States, as mediators, now find themselves in the most uncomfortable position of having sold a mined peace to a people who have been dying for 30 years.
It is time for Washington to take responsibility. Not with lukewarm statements, not with « calls for calm » addressed to both parties as if the DRC were bombarding Kigali.
Actions are needed. Concrete. Immediate. Irreversible.
Publicly name Paul Kagame and his regime as the direct aggressor of the DRC and the architect of the M23.Impose personal sanctions tomorrow on Kagame, his Minister of Defense, the involved RDF generals, and the shell companies that launder Congolese gold and coltan.
Freeze all non-humanitarian military and budgetary aid to Rwanda – yes, even that channeled through « counter-terrorism » programs.Demand the immediate and verifiable withdrawal of all Rwandan forces and the M23 from Congolese soil, under penalty of a UN-mandated SADC regional intervention.
Finally support the referral of the Rwandan case to the International Criminal Court. The evidence has been piling up for years. All that is missing is the political will.The United States wanted to play the great architects of peace. They got their photo, their headlines in the press, their moment of glory.
Today, children are dying in Uvira under Rwandan bombs while the ink of the agreement is still drying on the Oval Office desk.
If they do not act now, they will no longer be merely complicit by omission.
They will be co-authors of one of the greatest diplomatic cynicisms of the century.
Eugène Diomi Ndongala,
Christian Democracy
Démocratie Chrétienne, D.C. 