Spectacular turn of events as DRC forces crush foreign-backed M23 rebels

Antoine Roger Lokongo, Pambazuka

The Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), as the Congolese armed forces are known in French, and the Rwanda- and Uganda-backed M23 rebel movement made up of Rwandan and Ugandan demobilized soldiers, other Tutsi and Hutu insurgents and some Congolese, had not clashed since August 2013. The two sides were awaiting the outcome of the peace talks paid for by the Congolese government in Kampala and overseen by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni (who also backs the M23). Uganda had assumed the rotating presidency of the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region.

However, during the talks, apart from acts of terrorism, rapes, massacres and mineral looting (they have made $500 million since the launch of the insurgency last year, according to a report by Enough Project NGO), the M23 who occupied a huge portion of eastern Congo since May 2012 kept on militarily harassing the FARDC, applying Museveni’s and Kagame’s well-known tactic: “talk and fight”. Kinshasa could not tolerate it anymore, and the Congolese government suspended participation in the talks and the Military High Command ordered an all-out offensive against M23 launched on 25 October 2013.

Just within a week, the FARDC, supported by the intervention brigade made up of Tanzanian and South African troops within the UN Mission for Stabilisation of Congo (MONUSCO) recaptured all the key strongholds occupied by the M23, drove them out of eastern Congo, inflicted heavy losses on them (including the seizure of many weapons) and had many of them surrender, 27 in Rutsuru alone. This spectacular string of victories by the Congolese armed forces and defeats for the M23 started with the recapturing of the town of Kibumba, 30 kilometers from Goma, the provincial capital of North Kivu, on 25 October 2013 where three mass graves were discovered.

On 27 October 2013 the FARDC recaptured the town of Kiwanja, 70 kilometers north of Goma after heavy fighting. Local people welcomed the Congolese armed forces with shouts of joy. Unfortunately, a Tanzanian peacekeeper was killed during the fighting, as the Congo-based UN-sponsored Radio Okapi reported. Just a few hours later the army took control of the city of Rutshuru. The M23 rebels were just fleeing the advance of the FARDC. The people of this city greeted the arrival of the FARDC and encouraged them to pursue the rebels into their last strongholds. On Monday 28 October 2013, the army continued its advance. After Kibumba Kiwanja and Rutshuru, it was the turn of Rumangabo, one of Congo’s biggest military base located 50 kilometers from Goma, to pass under the control of the FARDC. Another mass grave was discovered there. On Wednesday, 30 October 2013, the Congolese military took control of Bunagana, a Congolese town near the border with Uganda which the M23 turned into its political headquarters.

Rebel retreat: Can the Congolese army build on a rare victory?

The Economist

THE army of the Democratic Republic of Congo is not used to being feted with palm leaves. It is also unaccustomed to winning. Its men are better known for rape and pillage. But a snap offensive against rebels in the eastern province of North Kivu which began on October 25th brought a rare military victory.

“They fought well and they behaved well,” said a surprised observer of the troops, who were welcomed by cheering crowds in Rutshuru, the northernmost town they have reached. The government forces did not do it alone. They were helped by a strengthened UN “intervention brigade” and faced a demoralised foe. The M23 mutineers, named after the date of a failed past peace accord in March 2009, were crippled by in-fighting and in the past year by Rwanda’s reduction of the support it once gave.

The rebels, whom Rwanda still denies it backs, suffered heavy casualties on October 26th-27th, trying to defend their frontline positions north of the regional capital, Goma. Their leader, Sultani Makenga, with several wounded men in tow, headed first for Bunagana, an outpost that soon fell as well, and then possibly onwards to the nearby border with Uganda. Hundreds more are reported to have defected.

The UN’s bullish new special envoy, Martin Kobler, said the M23, which briefly occupied Goma last year, was finished as a military force. “The era of cohabitation between armed groups and the UN is over,” he told a local radio station.

Eastern Congo's Recent Troubles - Who Pulls the Strings, What Is At Stake, and Why Do Things Happen?

Christoph Vogel, AllAfrica

Considered an overview, this piece combines a wide range of events, observations, and consequent thoughts on the current situation in the eastern DRC. Focusing on M23 rebels, DRC government, and the UN mission it will also take into account main other dynamics and actors.

An accumulation of events
In the last few weeks, the often low-intensity conflict in eastern Democratic Republic Congo (DRC) became not so low in intensity with newsworthy events unfolding on an almost daily basis. North of Goma fresh clashes broke out between the Congolese armed forces (FARDC) and the notorious M23 rebel movement.

During the ensuing bombing, various neighbourhoods in Goma were hit, as well as Rwandan territory in Rubavu district, bordering the DRC. The UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo, MONUSCO, for the first time engaged in offensive operations through its newly created Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) and faced fierce protests from residents of Goma resulting in tumultuous scenes in the bustling border town. One peacekeeper was killed andthe shelling of Rubavu provoked a military build-up by the Rwandan army on the border. After several days of joint FARDC-MONUSCO offensives (with losses suffered), M23 retreated from Kibati and announced a unilateral ceasefire, asking for the Kampala peace talks to resume.

Relations between the DRC government and its Rwandan counterparts have hit rock bottom and both regional and international mediation efforts have ground to a temporary halt. With opinions varying between anticipation of a window of opportunity and imminent regional war it is time to ask: Who pulls the strings, what is at stake, and why do things happen?

Rwanda defends military deployment along Congo border

Nicholas Kotch, BDlive

RWANDA has responded to regional criticism about its military deployment along the frontier with the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo saying its territory had been repeatedly hit by cross-border shelling.

"Rwanda did not deploy along the border for the sake of it. During a 10-day period our country was shelled 34 times," Rwanda’s ambassador to South Africa, Vincent Karega, told BDlive on Monday.

"That was an invitation for Rwanda to intervene," he said, suggesting that the stray shelling was not accidental but a ploy to try to suck Rwanda into the continuing conflict. It pits Congolese troops, supported by United Nations (UN) "peace enforcers", against the Rwandan-backed Congolese rebels called M23.

Rwanda first complained about the shelling during August’s intense fighting in areas north of the eastern Congo city of Goma. The M23 rebels were forced to retreat and there have been no reports of cross-border incursions by Rwanda’s army, one of Africa’s best.

But Rwanda was criticised at a special summit of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) in Windhoek last Wednesday. Rwanda is not a Sadc member.

Rwandans now weary of picking up the pieces of Kagame leadership

Antoine Roger Lokongo, pambazuka

The above headline of mine is surprisingly very civilized compared to ‘Umurabyo’ newspaper’s independent journalist Saidati Mukakibibi’s. She is now languishing in jail in Rwanda for having quite rightly compared President Paul Kagame with the Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler. She was arrested for defamation, inciting public disorder and ethnic ‘divisionism’ (Reuters, 13 July 2010) following the 1994 genocide, a trump card Kagame uses well both at home and abroad as a milking cow to keep and win new friends and to silence his critics. But for how long?

Mukakibibi is not the only one. Pascal Manirakiza, a Rwandan refugee who went missing in Uganda has been found tortured and unconscious and ‘dumped’ at a cemetery near the capital, Kampala, according to the Ugandan government which is supposed to provide him protection on the basis of the Geneva Convention. On the contrary, Manirakiza had earlier been arrested by Ugandan police on a warrant issued by Rwanda (the UN hypocritically protested the arrest). Manirakiza’s crime? He was one of four Rwandans who told the BBC last month that they were seeking asylum in Uganda. They accused the Rwandan army of forcibly recruiting them to fight in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (BBC News Africa, 27 August 2013). The BBC reminded us that in 2010, Rwanda’s ex-army chief Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa fled to South Africa. He accused Rwanda of a failed attempt to assassinate him later that year, after he was shot and wounded in Johannesburg. Rwanda denied any involvement. The shooting strained diplomatic relations between South Africa and Rwanda.

COVERING UP CRIMES

The question we ask now is: For how long the UN system, Britain and America are going to provide Museveni and Kagame cover or help cover-up crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide they are committing in the DRC? Not for too long! Belgian journalist Colette Braeckman, reporting for ‘Le Soir’ from Rwanda confirmed that ‘it is clear that there is a growing concern among the Rwandan people’ (Le Carnet de Colette Braeckman, 26 August 2013). Kagame’s leadership is now widely put into question despite recent visits by his die-hard friends such as former US president Bill Clinton who questioned the line of thinking of ‘some people in the human rights community who believe that every good thing that has happened in Rwanda should be negated by what they allege that they have done in the eastern Congo’ (BBC News Africa, 12 August 2013).

However, the fact that Rwanda and Uganda are still stubbornly committing crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in the DRC is not helping their powerful mentors in the West save faces.

Kagame remains the real commander-in-chief of the M23 insurgents. On 15 July 2013, the Congolese army, the Forces Armées de la RDC (FARDC) repulsed an attack by M23 ‘rebels’ backed by Rwandan special units in Mutaho, North Kivu Province.

SANDF in Congo advance

Stephan Hofstatter & James Oatway, The Times

Congolese troops consolidated their positions 3km from the M23 rebel stronghold of Kibumba, in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, last night in preparation for a fresh assault on the rebels.

A field commander yesterday told The Times at the front line, 20km north of Goma and 2km from the Rwandan border, that the rebels' forward position was on a low hill 600m away on the approach to Kibumba. Sporadic shelling could be heard.

"They have a company dug in there and the M23 still occupies Kibumba," said the commander, who cannot be named. "At the Rwandan border they have one tank and 82mm mortars but they are not firing on us. We're not sure why."

Another officer in the camp, whose soldiers were armed with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and machine guns, said his men were poised for the next attack.

"Once we receive the order we will clear them from that hill and advance."

On a tour of the battlefield with Congolese army commander Colonel Mustafa Mamadou, The Times was shown the bodies of several M23 rebels near the Rwandan border.

Pointing to a rebel with a gaping wound in his forehead, Mamadou said: "Parts of his uniform are Rwandan. From this you can tell Rwanda is supporting the M23."

A UN military source told The Times that the Rwandan uniforms were "indicators but not conclusive proof" of Rwandan military involvement in this week's battle.

Kikwete: This is my position on Rwanda

Songa Wa Songa, African Review

For the first time, President Jakaya Kikwete yesterday admitted that relations between Tanzania and Rwanda were tense but maintained it was not in the interest of his government to escalate the situation.

In a carefully worded address to the nation, Mr Kikwete expressed concern about Rwanda’s unease with him personally and the leadership of Tanzania in general, but played down fears that the matter could further strain the two countries’ relations.

The President said any hard feelings against him in the neighbouring country were misplaced and amounted to unfair and unwarranted criticism of a friendly nation such as Tanzania.

The head of state used the traditional end of the month speech to speak out on a matter that has in recent months raised political temperatures in the region and there were fears that tit could boil over into a full-blown conflict.

"I have been shocked and dismayed at the verbal attack and criticism levelled against me by Rwandan officials," Mr Kikwete said.

"What they are doing and saying does not reflect the true position …. (it is) completely out of proportion and out of context."

DR Congo: M23 Rebels Kill, Rape Civilians

Human Rights Watch

(Goma) – M23 rebels have summarily executed at least 44 people and raped at least 61 women and girls since March 2013 in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Local residents and rebel deserters reported recent forced recruitment of men and boys by the M23 in both Rwanda and Congo.

After a nearly two-month-long ceasefire, fighting resumed on July 14 between the Congolese armed forces and M23 rebels near the eastern city of Goma.

Residents and rebel deserters described recent support from within Rwanda to the abusive M23 forces. This includes regular movements from Rwanda into Congo of men in Rwandan army uniforms, and the provision of ammunition, food, and other supplies from Rwanda to the M23. The M23 has been recruiting inside Rwanda. Rwandan military officers have trained new M23 recruits, and have communicated and met with M23 leaders on several occasions.

“Not only is Rwanda allowing its territory to be used by the abusive M23 to get recruits and equipment, but the Rwandan military is still directly supporting the M23,” said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “This support is sustaining an armed group responsible for numerous killings, rapes and other serious abuses.”

The latest Human Rights Watch findings are based on more than 100 interviews since March, including with former M23 fighters who left the movement between late March and July and civilians living near the Congo-Rwanda border, some of whom were victims of abuses.

Kagame’s Hidden War in the Congo

Howard W. French, New York Review of Books

Africa’s World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe
by Gérard Prunier
Oxford University Press, 529 pp., $27.95                                                  
The Dynamics of Violence in Central Africa
by René Lemarchand
University of Pennsylvania Press, 327 pp., $59.95                                                  
The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality
by Thomas Turner
Zed Books, 243 pp., $32.95 (paper)                                                  

     

Although it has been strangely ignored in the Western press, one of the most destructive wars in modern history has been going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Africa’s third-largest country. During the past eleven years millions of people have died, while armies from as many as nine different African countries fought with Congolese government forces and various rebel groups for control of land and natural resources. Much of the fighting has taken place in regions of northeastern and eastern Congo that are rich in minerals such as gold, diamonds, tin, and coltan, which is used in manufacturing electronics.

Few realize that a main force driving this conflict has been the largely Tutsi army of neighboring Rwanda, along with several Congolese groups supported by Rwanda. The reason for this involvement, according to Rwandan president Paul Kagame, is the continued threat to Rwanda posed by the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu militia that includes remnants of the army that carried out the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Until now [2009], the US and other Western powers have generally supported Kagame diplomatically. And in January [2009], Congo president Joseph Kabila, whose weak government has long had limited influence in the eastern part of the country, entered a surprise agreement with Kagame to allow Rwandan forces back into eastern Congo to fight the FDLR. But the extent of the Hutu threat to Rwanda is much debated, and observers note that Rwandan-backed forces have themselves been responsible for much of the violence in eastern Congo over the years.

Rwanda’s intervention in Congo began in 1996. Two years earlier, Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) had invaded Rwanda from neighboring Uganda, defeating the government in Kigali and ending the genocide of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. As Kagame installed a minority Tutsi regime in Rwanda, some two million Hutu refugees fled to UN-run camps, mostly in Congo’s North and South Kivu provinces. These provinces, which occupy an area of about 48,000 square miles—slightly larger than the state of Pennsylvania—are situated along Congo’s eastern border with Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi and together have a population of more than five million people. In addition to containing rich deposits of minerals, North and South Kivu have, since the precolonial era, been subject to large waves of migration by people from Rwanda, including both Hutus and Tutsis. In recent decades these Rwandans have competed with more established residents for control of land.

Following Kagame’s consolidation of power in Rwanda, a large invasion force of Rwandan Tutsis arrived in North and South Kivu to pursue Hutu militants and to launch a war against the three-decade-long dictatorship of Congo (then known as Zaire) by Mobutu Sese Seko, whom they claimed was giving refuge to the leaders of the genocide. With Rwandan and Ugandan support, a new regime led by Laurent Kabila was installed in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. But after Kabila ordered the Rwandan troops to leave in 1998, Kagame responded with a new and even larger invasion of the country.

Why President Obama Called Out Congo's Neighbors Without Mentioning Names?

President Barack Obama concluded his trip to Africa on Tuesday, July 2, 2013. After visiting Senegal and South Africa, President Obama's last stop on his African tour was in Tanzania where he visited President Jakaya Kikwete. Both President Obama and Kikwete have made auspicious statements regarding the crisis in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Last week, President Kikwete called on both Rwanda and Uganda to enter into dialogue with their respective rebel militia who are present in the Congo instead of continuously utilizing rebel presence as a rationale for repeated interventions in the Congo.

On Monday, July 1, 2013 during his state visit to Tanzania, responding to a question from a Congolese journalist, President Obama said "The countries surrounding the Congo, they've got to make a commitment to stop funding armed groups that are encroaching on the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Congo."

President Obama's response is fascinating in two respects. First, in spite, of sixteen years of intervention in the DRC by U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda, which has triggered the deaths of millions of Congolese, President Obama still did not mention either country by name; he merely uttered the phrase "Congo's neighbors." Secondly, while the U.S. has repeatedly acknowledged that its allies, Rwanda and Uganda are funding armed groups in the Congo, it continues to arm, train, finance and provide diplomatic and political cover for both countries.

Philippe Bolopion of Human Rights Watch says it best when he observed in a New York Times commentary: "So

The Origins of War in the DRC: How the region became overrun by warlords and lacking any kind of functional government

Armin Rosen, The Atlantic

The camp for internally displaced persons
on April 22, 2013. (Armin Rosen)

The conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which I visited over the last week of April, has killed somewhere between 3.5 and 5.4 million people since 1996. It destroys human life in crushing and un-cinematic fashion. Its victims live deep in the mountains of central Africa, and despite the efforts of a few intrepid journalists, scholars, and human rights observers, their suffering goes largely undocumented. They include peasant women who are raped collecting firewood, children dying of cholera in bulging refugee camps, and starving young boys conscripted into militia groups so numerous that experts have trouble keeping track of them all. The DRC's conflict might be the deadliest since World War II, and one of world's worst active crises. But it also may be the most obscure -- the most anonymous.

In Kitchanga, the conflict erupted into view during a bloody week in February and March. The aftermath is still visible, although the journey there is a torrid demonstration of how the land, a blinding-green labyrinth of steep valleys bordered with jagged volcanic hills, can mask the tragedies contained within it. The road from Goma, the eastern DRC's largest city, rises into the mountains of the East African Rift, where villages stand silhouetted against the distant shores of Lake Kivu, a harmony of sloping green and mesmeric blue that stretches far into an unpolluted sky. As the road climbs, travelers can have the illusion of being eye-level with the white smoke billowing from the Nyiragongo volcano, alone in the center of the gaping mountain-ringed valley.