Good news is, of course, a relative term when it comes to Congo — perhaps the country that’s seen the most suffering over the past ten years. But it seems the government of Rwanda cut a deal with the government of Congo to form an agreement to crack down on Hutu militias the Rwandans don’t like and have Rwanda turn on its proxy, the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda who Rwanda used to fight the Hutus but who’d been making all sorts of trouble and attempting, as Rwanda-backed rebels in Congo tend to, to overthrow the central government.
Mark Goldberg observes that this is a pretty unexpected turn of events since “last month a no-nonsense Security Council ‘panel of experts’ report showed that Nkunda was essentially a front for Rwandan business interests in Eastern Congo.” One hopes Kigali’s decision to switch sides will help put Congo back on a path toward stability.