Parties in the Congo war committed themselves to a ceasefire in July last year, but the accords have been breached repeatedly
Gregory Mthembu-Salter
As the United Nations announces its plans for further troop deployments in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the opposing alliances in Congo’s year-and-a- half long multination war are desperately trying to sever each other’s main supply lines before the UN soldiers come.
In mid-March the Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA) and its Congolese allies the Rassemblement pour la Dmocratie-Goma (RCD-Goma) captured – or recaptured, depending who you listen to – Idumbe in Kasa Occidental. Idumbe is a tiny little place, but it is strategically positioned on the Sankuru tributary of the Kasa River near the regional transport hub of Ilebo.
Ilebo marks the point where Congo’s railway line from the economically and strategically vital southern Katanga province to the capital Kinshasa terminates, and where river transport along the Kasa and then the mighty Congo River itself takes over.
If Ilebo were to fall to the RCD-Goma, it would prove a crippling blow to the Congolese government, headed by President Laurent Desir Kabila. Ilebo’s capture would cut the main transport link between the two major areas of the Congo Kabila still controls, and would make it almost impossible for him to access the vital revenues that the southern towns of Mbuji-Mayi and Lubumbashi still provide.
Kabila’s military alliance has, however, been enjoying military successes of its own. Since its successful defence of Ikela in January, the alliance has pushed eastwards, apparently hoping to hook up with the Rwandan interahamwe and Congolese Mai-Mai militias who still terrorise large areas of Congo’s eastern Kivu provinces, and wage sporadic attacks on the RPA.
The Congolese army (FAC) and Zimbabwean forces’ current area of operations is thought to be between Kongolo and Kabalo on the southern reaches of the Congo River. Reliable information on their progress is near-impossible to come by, but their very presence in this area implies a setback for Rwanda, since it is the closest the FAC and Zimbabwean forces have come to its borders since the war began.
Both alliances publicly denounce each other for violating the Lusaka Peace Accords, which were signed in July 1999, and which commit all warring parties to a ceasefire. The accords have been breached repeatedly by all parties since, but according to the RCD-Goma, Kabila’s violations have reached a new level of gravity.
At a press conference on March 21, RCD- Goma president Emile Ilunga said Congo was “in a state of war”, and threaten to return, officially, to the fight. A few days earlier, a Zimbabwean army representative had threatened serious consequences if alleged RCD-Goma ceasefire violations continued.
Analysts are divided about whether this is really no different from what has been going on since the Lusaka accords were signed, or whether full-scale war in the Congo is now on the cards once more.
South African President Thabo Mbeki is continuing with a series of bilateral meetings with the key players in the region designed to impress on them South Africa’s commitment to Lusaka, but the contents of his discussions are being kept firmly confidential.
Last weekend Mbeki met acting Rwandan president Paul Kagame, and on Monday he is expected to meet Kabila in Cairo, during the Organisation of African Unity summit that begins there next week.
Presidential representative Parks Mankahlana preferred not to judge whether the Lusaka accords were unravelling or not, and would say only that “developments are not the kind that we would expect to see by now, and that worries us”.
According to Monuc, the UN observer mission in Congo, the priority is to stop the conventional war being waged between the two opposing alliances, and in a recent briefing paper has outlined its plans to do so.
In the short term, this means getting a battalion to each of its four regional centres and establishing river patrols based in Mbandaka on the way to Kinshasa, and Kisangani. Monuc is already saying that the 5E500 troops agreed by the UN Security Council earlier this year will not be enough, and that more than 16E500 may soon be needed.
At present, however, there are only 103 Monuc soldiers in the Congo, stretched out across 11 locations, and thus incapable of monitoring anything but a fraction of the military action going on, let alone exerting pressure on the warring parties to stop them.
On March 23, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asked the General Assembly to authorise a further $160-million for Monuc, on top of the $41-million authorised last year. Yet it is not money shortages which are preventing further deployment, but the UN’s concern at the lack of a commitment from the warring parties to the Lusaka accords. The UN Security Council imposed this commitment as a requirement for deployment when it gave its assent to the plan in February.
UN under-secretary general for peacekeeping operations Bernard Miyet is currently touring the region trying to secure those commitments from all the main players, but while everyone he has spoken to assures him that they are fully in favour of a ceasefire, the war goes on.
Meanwhile, the designated mediator of a political resolution to Congo’s problems, former Botswanan president Ketumile Masire, has troubles of his own. Masire’s role is supposed to be separate from Monuc’s, but he has raised Congolese suspicions by his close working relationship with the UN field operation in Kinshasa.
At any event, Masire was blocked by Congolese government from travelling to rebel-held Bunia near Uganda on March 22, on the grounds that he had not asked its permission first. Masire was furious and has accused the Congolese government of frustrating his efforts to bring peace.
For Kabila, while the news is not all bad from the battlefield for once, other developments are more worrying. Kabila’s main headache is that the continued participation of his main ally, Zimbabwe, is becoming more uncertain.
The latest from Harare is that general elections will take place in May. While few expect the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) to win, it seems set to make itself a force to be recognised in Parliament. Pulling out of the Congo is proving to be one of the MDC manifesto’s most popular features with voters and according to the laws of conventional politics, this should prompt a weakening of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s determination to pursue the conflict.
However, the relevance of conventional political laws has waned considerably in Zimbabwe of late, and it would be reckless to predict a Zimbabwean pull-out just yet.
Also problematic for Kabila is that former South African president Nelson Mandela has apparently succeeded in his efforts to bring Burundi’s rebel militia, the FDD and the FNL, to the negotiating table.
Mandela has just concluded another round of multi-party talks on Burundi in Arusha, Tanzania, and although the rebels did not attend, they are thought to be likely to at the next round at the end of April.
Once the FDD and FNL are there, they will find it harder to continue their military campaign in Congo. Until now, the FDD and FNL have proved extremely useful to Kabila, harassing the RPA and the Burundian army close to their own borders, but their participation at Arusha could mean that he loses these vital allies.
More encouragingly for Kabila, the Angolan government’s recent military successes against Unita in Angola could free up its armed forces for increased deployment in the Congo. However, experts on Angola warn that Angola’s prime strategic interest in Congo is in safeguarding the route to Cabinda, and not in foraying once more into proximity with the RPA in the east.
For its part, the Rwanda-Uganda alliance that has been fighting Kabila since August 1998 is also once more showing signs of severe strain. Rwanda and Uganda’s armies clashed in Kisangani last August, but after a series of high-level summits, their governments have since claimed that everything was back to normal.
However, on March 26, the RCD-Goma faction backed by Rwanda complained that Uganda had deployed two fresh battalions and artillery around Kisangani. This was later confirmed by Rwanda, which reported its concern that these forces were “digging in” in contravention of accords reached between the two sides after the August 1999 clashes. Rwanda is seeking a new round of top-level talks with Uganda, but none have been scheduled as yet.
Rwanda has been experiencing political problems of its own too, with the speaker of Parliament, then the prime minister and most recently the president all resigning from office this year. The changes are unlikely to affect Rwanda’s involvement in Congo much, since Kagame, who directs the war effort, remains firmly entrenched, but they are helping to sap international confidence in his government.
Donors are particularly uneasy in the wake of the recent report on Unita sanctions-busting by Canada’s ambassador to the UN, Robert Fowler, which alleged close contacts between Kagame and Unita leader Jonas Savimbi. Kagame has strongly denounced the report’s findings and Rwandan diplomats are fighting back, claiming a multi-pronged disinformation campaign being waged against them by “negative forces” in the international community.
Recent rumours emanating from intelligence circles of a strong Unita presence in RPA held areas of eastern Congo have also been forcefully denied, with the Rwandan government challenging anyone to come and show it where the Unita forces are.
While the way forward in Congo remains as confused as ever, there are some grounds for optimism. If Mandela succeeds in drawing Burundi’s rebels deeper into the logic of peace and compromise through the Arusha process, one of the factors stoking the war in Congo will have been lessened or removed.
In addition, the pressure on Zimbabwe to reduce its commitment to the war will almost certainly be even greater after general elections. And since Rwanda and Uganda are increasingly finding that the Congo war is incompatible with their continued good relations, it may mean that they will edge to the decision that their relationship is more important than the war and scale back their commitment.
But maybe not. This is Congo, where optimism has not had a good run of it for years. While the South African government does what it can to move the Lusaka process along, it must still wait to discover with the rest of us what twists and turns await this most troubled of African countries.