/ 3 December 2004

Kagame ruffles DRC feathers

Just days after African leaders pledged to end the running sore of warfare in the heart of their continent, the Great Lakes region threatened to explode again.

Joseph Kabila, the interim president of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) announced on Monday he was sending 10 000 more troops to his eastern border to counter claims of fresh incursions by Rwandan forces. On Tuesday Rwandan President Paul Kagame as much as admitted to his Parliament that he was on the verge of invading the DRC and that his troops might already have crossed the border.

Kabila’s misgivings have been confirmed by United Nations observers, who said this week they had seen Rwandan soldiers in the DRC.

Rwanda has twice invaded the DRC in pursuit of Hutus who fled their home after being responsible for the 1994 genocide of Tutsis and Hutu moderates.

The Rwandan action was largely responsible for spurring the intervention of six other African countries — mostly in support of the late president Laurent Kabila.

This led then United States secretary of state Madeleine Albright to characterise the conflict as the closest thing Africa had experienced to a world war.

The latest escalation threatens the hard-won South African mediation efforts that started by getting Rwandan forces out of the DRC in 2002 and culminated in the formation of a transitional government. But the mineral-rich eastern Congo has never experienced that security, albeit tenuous.

Most of the 13 000 UN forces in the DRC are deployed there. Earlier this year Kabila had to send 10 000 troops to the region to bring Rwandan backed rebels under control.

Kagame makes no attempt to disguise his determination to get at his enemy hiding in the DRC.

He has repeatedly said that if Kabila and the UN cannot capture the ”genocidaires”, he will do it himself. The tension in the area has been further exacerbated by a spat between Kagame and his former ally and protector Uganda.

The countries exchanged an expulsion of diplomats after Uganda accused Rwanda of training a dissident Ugandan group.