When the fighting flared up again it looked like a resumption of the awful war in central Africa, but the rebels retreated, the peace accord survived and the Democratic Republic of Congo counted the cost of the crisis in dozens rather than millions dead.
African and western diplomats congratulated themselves last week on dispersing the war clouds which had gathered over the DRC and Rwanda. But on the border between the two countries on Tuesday nobody considered the crisis over, least of all the man who started it.
Colonel Jules Mutebutsi fired the opening shot of what may yet become a full-scale war when he mutinied last month and briefly seized the eastern Congolese city of Bukavu. Outgunned and outnumbered, he fled into Rwanda last week with 300 of his men. He had lost the battle but not, he said, the desire to return and finish what he had begun
”It was a mistake to leave Bukavu, I regret it. It was supposed to be demilitarised but I was betrayed.” He was angry that after he agreed to withdraw from the city it was occupied by Congolese government troops and United Nations peacekeepers, who then chased him across the border.
He accused the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, of plotting genocide against his ethnic group, the Banyamulenge. ”He is not the legitimate president when he’s ordering the killing of people.”
The colonel was blustering: there was no promise to demilitarise Bukavu, nor have groups such as Human Rights Watch found evidence of genocide. But his eagerness to rejoin the fray appeared genuine.
The question is: will he get the chance? Disarmed by the Rwandan army and lodged as a refugee in a military camp outside the border town of Cyangugu, he is physically barred from leaving by no more than a greasy nylon rope slung between two stakes.
To assess whether he will cross it is a complex calculation. The Congolese war, a five-year bloodbath which sucked in six countries and killed more than three million people, officially ended in 2002 when the foreign troops withdrew and the Congolese rebels joined Kabila’s government in the capital Kinshasa for a transitional period of power-sharing before elections are held next year.
Colonel Mutebutsi, who was a Rwandan-backed rebel during the war, had supposedly signed the accord and owed allegiance to Kinshasa. But with the help of another renegade, General Laurent Nkunda, he shattered the peace by seizing Bukavu. Kinshasa accused Rwanda of masterminding the strike and sent 10 000 soldiers to reclaim the region. Rwanda rejected the accusation and said it feared an invasion. Under pressure from African and western governments the parties backed down and agreed to send monitors to the border.
”I told both sides to cool it and to keep talking to each other, as I’m glad they are,” the British minister for Africa, Chris Mullin, said after meeting Kabila and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. ”They understand that another conflict is absolutely not in their interests.”
Not everyone is so sure. Both presidents have reason to drag their heels on peace, according to analysts in both countries.
Genocide
Kabila’s desire to marginalise the Rwandan-backed rebels he failed to defeat in battle could explain why Congo’s rival militias and rebel groups have not been integrated into a national army. He has also been slow to disarm one of his former allies, the Rwandan Hutus accused of the 1994 genocide who fled to eastern Congo after Kagame’s mainly Tutsi regime took power.
For its part Rwanda is suspected of trying to keep eastern Congo and its mineral resources under its influence.
Colonel Patrick Karegeya, a Rwandan army spokesperson, denied that Rwanda had backed the renegades or sent troops to Bukavu. ”It’s not like snakes sliding on the ground, or rats digging into the ground — you would see them.”
But he said that Congo would be invaded if it did not disarm and repatriate the Hutu militias, which occasionally raid Rwandan villages. ”When it becomes unbearable, we’ll attack.”
Kinshasa says Rwanda has already attacked by using proxies to seize Bukavu. Though there was no genocide the fighting inflamed ethnic tension because Congolose troops accused the Banyamulenge, who are ethnically Tutsi, of supporting the renegades. ”The soldiers went from door to door, looting, shooting, raping,” said Roger Baleke-Longangi (44) a carpenter who escaped with his family. ”They judge by your physiognomy. If your nose is pointy, that’s it.”
Of the 3 700 refugees from the latest fighting at a camp in Cyangugu, and another 30 000 in Burundi, hardly any want to return home, because they are afraid that the fighting will resume, aid workers say. General Nkunda and up to 4 000 renegades are thought to be still in the DRC. Meanwhile Colonel Mutebutsi passes the time toying with his cellphone, playing poker and contemplating another gamble in his homeland. – Guardian Unlimited Â