Laurent Nkunda, the mastermind behind the recent rebellion that wracked Eastern Congo, was arrested on Thursday by Rwandan government troops. This is unqualified good news for several reasons. First of all, Laurent Nkunda was an incredibly evil man and the world would do better off without him. His ruthless campaign elevated soldiers to leadership positions on the merit of their brutality, recruited over 2500 child soldiers by some accounts, and displaced over 250 000 civilians, causing a massive refugee crisis. That is entirely omitting the number of people he's had killed.
The arrest is also great news because the Rwandan government did it. Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo have had bad blood for a while, since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where over 800 000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus were systematically slaughtered. Rwanda accuses the DRC of supporting remnants of the genocidal elements within their territory. A UN report (referred to here) validated this suspicion, but also added that the Rwandans had been sponsoring Nkunda's devastating rebellion. Seemingly, once the game was up, both parties collectively said "whoops" and gave a cheeky smile.
So Rwanda arrested Nkunda and is considering extraditing him to the DRC, while his rebellion dissipates and the Congolese army tentatively takes control once more of the East. The DRC, for its part, has agreed to joint Congolese-Rwandan military operations to ferret out the Rwandan rebels (the FDLR, if you're curious about meaningless and ephemeral acronyms) that are harbouring the genocidal goons from 1994.
Good news? It seems so. In a tv show, this is where the episode would end and we'd get a montage of Rwanda and the DRC co-operating, patching up their differences, getting an ice-cream on the pier, and maybe sharing a tentative kiss. So I guess this would be a good time for both my readers to put on their most sentimental rock song and slowly turn the brightness of their screen down, resolving never again to read the news.
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