An uneasy standoff persists in the lush hills overlooking Goma, the aid and trade hub of eastern Congo. After a six-month hiatus, heavily-armed rebels exchanged artillery fire with Congolese forces, all under the watchful eye of United Nations peacekeepers. Only the arrival of UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon in the lakeside city last week delivered a temporary ceasefire.
What all the actors are waiting for – from the rebels and the government soldiers dug into the volcanic rock to the blue helmets and the weary citizens of Goma – is the deployment of the UN's new "intervention brigade".
Ban called the 3 000-strong force with a mandate to neutralise armed groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) troubled North and South Kivu provinces "unprecedented in the history of UN peacekeeping". But only 100 members of the force have arrived.
Ban was met by beseeching crowds with appeals for peace daubed on bedsheets, many of them asking when the new force will arrive.
They were told that the UN "will always stand with them" but officials admitted it could be August before the full complement arrives. Expectations of what the brigade, which will draw troops from South Africa, Tanzania and Malawi, will be able to achieve are dangerously high.
It will deploy into a conflict that has been repeatedly stewed and reheated. The M23 rebellion in the foothills of the Virunga volcanoes began last year as a mutiny in Congo's ragtag army, led by officers involved in a past uprising. They claim that promises made when they were integrated into the army have been broken and call themselves the M23 in reference to the date of a past peace deal – March 23 2009, when their political wing signed a peace treaty with the DRC government.
Most of them are ethnic Tutsis, as are the leaders of Rwanda, a short walk away across the border.
Delay in troop arrivals
​South African and Tanzanian troops will be on the ground by the middle of June, officials said, but the Malawians are not expected before the end of July. The controversial drones – the first time unmanned aerial vehicles will be used in a peacekeeping operation – are still out for tender, with five firms competing for the $15-million contract.
Roger Meece, the UN's top official in the DRC, said the brigade was needed for peace enforcement as the blue helmets had been trying to manage a post-conflict zone "that was not post-conflict". He called the force "an important tool", but warned against seeing it as a panacea.
A more concerted international approach to the eastern DRC began in November when the M23 routed the Congolese army and overran the UN force, to capture Goma. They later withdrew, but the humiliation was enough to persuade some members of the UN Security Council to sanction a tougher approach. Rwanda was accused by UN investigators of having "command and control" of the M23, and saw the foreign aid on which it depends frozen briefly.
The stick came in the form of the new brigade to join the 17 000-strong peacekeeping mission in the DRC, which has often been accused of being ineffective.
Disagreements
​However, serious disagreements persist at the highest levels inside the UN over how the brigade should be used. Some diplomats see it as a deterrent that should be used sparingly, if at all. They fear that casualties in any fighting with M23 will reignite tensions with Rwanda and spark a potential diplomatic crisis with South Africa and Tanzania. Others want it to engage rebels as soon as possible.
"It's a deterrent, but it's not a nuclear deterrent that is never meant to be used,” said a top UN official on condition of anonymity.
The carrot for the Great Lakes region has been a new peace process signed by 11 countries in February. The "framework for hope” has been backed by $1-billion in development aid from the World Bank and is meant, in time, to address the grievances and rivalries that underlie the conflict. The bank's president Jim Yong Kim, who took the unusual step of accompanying the UN delegation on the recent visit to the DRC, Rwanda and Uganda, wants to create a "peace dividend" that will keep all the sides at the negotiation table. The bulk of the funding will go to health, education and new hydropower projects.
Much of the hope for the framework – whose authors admit privately that it is "thin"– rests with Ban's choice of envoy, former Irish president Mary Robinson. She has long-standing relationships with the presidents of the DRC (Joseph Kabila), Rwanda (Paul Kagame) and Uganda (Yoweri Museveni), which is rooted in her diplomacy in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide.
Diplomats' views on the causes of the crisis have tended to reflect where they are based, with those in Kinshasa favouring the view that Rwanda is to blame for instability in eastern Congo; while those in Kigali favour the Rwandan view that Kabila is incapable of controlling the restive Kivus or his lawless military.
Path to lasting peace
​Robinson appears to view Uganda's Museveni as the key to any lasting peace deal if he can be persuaded to mediate in the bitter relationship between Kagame and Kabila.
The main problem that must be overcome is persuading the M23 to lay down their arms.
Pressure on Rwanda has provoked a withdrawal of much of its support for the rebels, which in turn prompted splits and the surrender of one of its commanders, Bosco Ntaganda, to the International Criminal Court. But much of M23's fighting strength remains, and reliable sources report that it continues to recruit new fighters.
In the past, rebel commanders have been paid off with army commissions and their fighters folded into the Congolese armed forces. Given the mutiny last year, that option appears to be off the table. An alternative that is being considered is the idea of buying off the rebels with farmland on the other side of the DRC, but there is little indication that this would work.
A battlefield victory over the M23 remains unlikely, and many of the worst human rights abuses in eastern Congo have been committed by its own army. In the meantime, Goma's future remains uncertain.