You do not need to be an Albert Einstein to understand what is at the root of the latest round of warfare in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo: it is the aftermath of the 100-day genocide by Rwanda's Hutu-dominated government of 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and moderate Hutus in 1994.
A Tutsi army led by Paul Kagame, now president of Rwanda, chased the Hutu government army and its militias into two eastern DRC provinces that adjoin Rwanda, North and South Kivu. There the Hutus, aided by the DRC government of then-president Joseph Kabila, formed an army-in-exile, the Interahamwe ("Those Who Stand Together").
The Interahamwe, having killed at a rate of 8000 a day in Rwanda, found another Tutsi enemy in eastern DRC, long discriminated against by successive governments and denied full citizenship.
Having fought back with huge efficiency and ruthlessness in 1994, the Rwandan Tutsis and the DRC Tutsis - led by General Laurent Nkunda, who had fought in Rwanda with Kagame 14 years earlier - have for years been making the following very clear: if neither the Kinshasa-based DRC government nor the United Nations do not crack down mercilessly on the Interahamwe, then they will do the job.
Instead, the DRC government has given the Interahamwe safe haven and recruited them as military allies of its own ragtag national army.
Meanwhile the Tutsis on either side of the Rwanda-DRC border accuse the increasingly discredited UN peacekeeping force in Congo, MONUC, of turning a blind eye to Kinshasa's embrace of the men responsible for the genocide.
The Tutsis of Rwanda now exercise power, but the Tutsis of eastern DRC have never felt safe. On both sides of the border, they were aghast when the UN and international aid agencies fed and sheltered hundreds of thousands of Hutus from Rwanda for years after the genocide, knowing those refugee camps sustained by global charity were bases from which the former genocidaires were organising to resume operations.
Given these facts it was only a matter of time before Kagame and Nkunda triggered yet another military operation - following earlier campaigns in 1996 and 1998 - to establish a Greater Rwanda extending into the DRC's Kivu provinces. Kagame rejects allegations that he aids and arms Nkunda, although the fact of the matter is an open secret in central and eastern Africa. Indeed, many former Rwanda Tutsi soldiers fight in Nkunda's DRC Tutsi guerrilla army.
These conflicts have taken a staggering 5.5 million lives since the mid-1990s.
Whatever the outcome of new diplomatic efforts, it is certain that neither Nkunda nor Kagame will renounce armed conflict while neither the international community nor the DRC government tackles the Interahamwe.
The 17,500-strong MONUC force, the biggest peacekeeping force ever deployed by the UN, made up of units from Third World countries whose governments are largely motivated by the dollars paid by the world body into their coffers, has become part of the problem rather than a solution.
In December 2004, President Kagame said only a decision by President Kabila to disarm his Interahamwe allies could prevent war: "If nobody takes care of it, then we reserve the right to deal with it."
