The United States and the United Kingdom responded to the outbreak of war in eastern Congo late last month by slapping sanctions on Rwanda‘s defense minister and the spokesman for Congo’s M23 insurgent group. The State Department’s move was counterproductive and morally inverse, the equivalent of blaming a beaten wife for fighting back against her abusive husband.

Congo’s M23 insurgency erupted because of the failure of the Congolese government to uphold previous peace agreements. The current fighting is the result of a conscious decision by Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi to incite ethnic violence and to shelter and support those groups that perpetrated the 1994 Rwanda genocide. Make no mistake: M23 is Congolese. Its members may share ethnicity with some Rwandans, but the M23 alliance is broader-based and representative of the ethnic mosaic that characterizes Congo’s North and South Kivu provinces.