1 AfricArXiv • African Studies DISCUSSING THE CAUSES AND CONTEXT OF WARS AND CONFLICT INVOLVING THE BANYARWANDA FROM EASTERN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO Privat Rutazibwa 1 1 Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany Contact email: privat.rutazibwa@hu-berlin.de Published on: Jun 25, 2023 DOI: https://doi.org/10.21428/3b2160cd.259767b3 License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Summary This article gives historical perspective and decolonial analysis to the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It reviews a number of scholars - including United Nations (UN) lead experts on the DRC - who refuse to acknowledge the role of anti-Tutsi racism in sparking the intermittent violence that has plagued eastern DRC for sixty years now. They offer instead far-fetched explanations that are scholarly and moral vindication to the racist instigators of violence and their bigoted rhetoric in Congo. There is a surprising and troubling ideological convergence between the writings of these scholars and the propaganda material of extremist anti-Tutsi circles in the Congo and the region. There seems to be a deliberate desire, on the part of the Congolese authorities and above all of the decision-makers within the international community, to uproot the Congolese Tutsi populations from eastern Congo. No measure has been taken to date to repatriate Congolese refugees settled in Rwanda who exceed 80,000 in 2023, and others in different countries. This desire to eradicate the Tutsi from Congo is also manifested by the relentlessness against the only politico-military organizations which carry the demands of the Congolese Tutsi, namely the CNDP and the M23. Rather than encouraging the Congolese government to listen to their demands, even the UN has fought these rebellions militarily in support of the government troops, killing around 400 CNDP combatants in 2006 with MONUC helicopters and combat tanks, and establishing the Intervention Brigade within the MONUSCO in 2013 with an offensive mandate to neutralize M23; two unprecedented facts in the history of UN peacekeeping operations. There has always been a constant, deliberate and relentless desire to make Rwanda and its real or supposed allies hold the responsibility for serious crimes and even genocide in Congo. Continuing to portray post-genocide Rwanda as the source of all Congolese woes has become an easy refrain where successive Congolese leaders and their foreign allies seem to benefit from a kind of ‘unlimited irresponsibility insurance’. Influential decision-makers in the West, with a colonial mindset, oppose that the Tutsi can have any political role in the region, whatever the level. The M23 rebellion, whose paternity is attributed to Rwanda in the usual pattern, was in fact created by the clumsiness of Kabila's Western advisers who wanted to destroy what they perceived as 'the growing and disproportionate power’ of ex-CNDP Tutsi officers and men within the Congolese army. The international community does not have the will to bring peace to Congo. A collective of lawyers published a press release in March 2023 describing 'the extreme violence against the Tutsi, Banyamulenge and Hema, especially in Goma where demonstrations provoked by hatemongers turn into pogroms without the slightest intervention by the police and the army to protect the victims.’ The UN treats the Congolese state as a normal state, rather than seeing it as the real problem. When it talks of security in Congo, it means the protection of the territory of the state, rather than human security, which includes the security of individuals and groups. It is time for the UN to find a political solution to the problems of DRC, instead of using its planes to fire on the M23. Key words Anti-Tutsi racism, African Great Lakes region, decolonial, DRC, human security, M23, Rwanda.