[BretLudwig]

Tall black people continue to push not tall black people around



"The New York Times has an article on the latest fighting in the Congo,
complete with a picture of Congolese Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda,
who, I must say, has a quite distinctive fashion sense. (He claims to be a
Seventh-Day Adventist priest. The Seventh-Day Adventists say they don't
have priests and wouldn't take a warlord if they did).

There is a general rule in Africa, if not across the world: Behind any
rebellion with legs is usually a meddling neighbor. And whether the
rebellion in eastern Congo explodes into another full-fledged war, and
drags a large chunk of central Africa with it, seems likely to depend on
the involvement of Rwanda, Congos tiny but disproportionately mighty
neighbor.

There is a long and bloody history here, and this time around the
evidence seems to be growing that Rwanda is meddling again in Congos
troubles; at a minimum, the interference is on the part of many Rwandans.
As before, Rwandas stake in Congo is a complex mix of strategic
interest, business opportunity and the real fears of a nation that has
heroically rebuilt itself after near obliteration by ethnic hatred.

The signs are ever-more obvious, if not yet entirely open. Several
demobilized Rwandan soldiers, speaking in hushed tones in Kigali,
Rwandas tightly controlled capital, described a systematic effort by
Rwandas government-run demobilization commission to send hundreds if
not thousands of fighters to the rebel front lines. ...

There seems to be a reinvigorated sense of the longstanding
brotherhood between the Congolese rebels, who are mostly ethnic Tutsi, and
the Tutsi-led government of Rwanda, which has supported these same rebels
in the past.
The brotherhood is relatively secret for now, just as it was in the
late 1990s when Rwanda denied being involved in Congo, only to later admit
that it was occupying a vast section of the country. Rwandas leaders are
vigilant about not endangering their carefully crafted reputation as
responsible, development-oriented friends of the West.

There has been a Tall vs. Not-Tall struggle going on in Central East
Africa for a long time, dating back well before the arrival of Europeans.
It manifests itself under different tribal names, such Tutsi vs. Hutu in
Rwanda, Burundi, and Congo, or Luo vs. Kikuyu in Kenya. Generally
speaking, the Not-Talls have the numbers and the Talls have the brains.
(Our President-Elect, by the way, is 50% Tall.)"

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/12/t...ntinue-to.html

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