For the better part of this year, the peace accords that brought five years of civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) to an end have been described as “fragile”. As 2004 ends, however, the agreements seem perilously close to breaking down completely.
The past weeks have seen a surge in tensions between the DRC and neighbouring Rwanda, with Rwandan President Paul Kagame threatening last month to deploy troops in the DRC to disarm militias from the Hutu ethnic group.
Kagame has repeated a long-standing claim that these guerrillas pose a security threat to his country. A number of the militants, along with members of the Rwandan army, fled to the DRC (then Zaire) in 1994 to escape repercussions for their part in the Rwandan genocide of that year. Upwards of 800 000 minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in this massacre.
The ranks of the guerrillas have reportedly been swelled by more recent recruits. These teenagers first came to the DRC as children of Hutu refugees who feared they would be killed, in reprisal for the genocide, by the Tutsi-dominated government that took power in Rwanda after the killings.
Rwanda previously invaded the DRC in 1996 and 1998 — also on the grounds of pursuing Hutu militants.
The first invasion led to the toppling of former Zairean head of state Mobutu Sese Seko, who had allowed the guerrillas to use Hutu refugee camps in the east of his country as staging posts for incursions into Rwanda.
The second invasion resulted in the DRC’s five-year civil war, which led to the death of about three million people (many of whom succumbed to illness and hunger).
Rwanda agreed to withdraw its forces from the DRC in 2002 to help end the civil war there in return for a pledge that Hutu militants would be disarmed by United Nations peacekeepers and Congolese government forces. According to media reports, only a third of the estimated 10 000 to 20 000 Hutu rebels in the DRC have been rounded up.
Analysts appear divided, however, on the threat posed by these militants.
“The UN estimates FDLR forces [Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, the main Hutu guerrilla group] to be some 8 000 to 10 000 strong; they do not seem to pose a serious military threat to Rwanda, but recent signs the group has been readying attacks have understandably raised tensions,” said a Brussels-based think-tank, the International Crisis Group, in a press release issued earlier this month. (Reports indicate that the UN has not found evidence of attacks already being launched.)
Rwanda is also accused of using the Hutu threat in the eastern DRC as a pretext for maintaining a presence in the region, in order to profit from its enormous mineral resources.
Two UN panels have implicated Rwanda and Uganda, which also backed Congolese rebels, in illegal resource exploitation in the DRC. In addition, the panels pointed the finger at various other states — including Zimbabwe, which supported Kinshasa in the five-year civil war.
While Kagame has subsequently backtracked on last month’s threat to invade the DRC, saying the international community would be left to deal with Hutu militants, reports indicate that Rwandan troops have in fact crossed into the DRC.
Kinshasa accuses Rwandan forces of providing support to dissident Congolese soldiers who have clashed with government troops in the eastern DRC, including the province of North Kivu. Certain dissidents are said to have previously belonged to a Rwandan-backed faction of the rebel Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), which had its base at the town of Goma.
Members of RCD-Goma were absorbed into the DRC’s national army in terms of the 2002 peace accords. However, the creation of a truly unified force has remained elusive.
In June this year, RCD commander Laurent Nkunda occupied the eastern town of Bukavu, saying he was trying to prevent massacres of Congolese Tutsis known as Banyamulenge. The UN later said there was no evidence to support Nkunda’s claims. The commander is widely held to be Rwanda’s military leader in the DRC.
“The stakes in North Kivu are extremely high,” said the London-based human rights watchdog Amnesty International in a statement issued on December 21, adding: “The RCD-Goma, traditionally allied to and supported by Rwanda, regards the province as its bastion. Elements of the political and military wings of the RCD-Goma are increasingly opposed to the extension of the transitional government’s authority to the province.”
Amnesty also notes: “Following the loss of South Kivu province to governmental control earlier this year, the dissident RCD-Goma force under its commander General Laurent Nkunda, responsible for multiple human rights abuses across South Kivu, has regrouped in North Kivu.”
As there is little hope that the DRC’s army can restore order to the eastern DRC, attention has focused on the UN peacekeeping force that has been deployed there since 1999, called Monuc.
While Monuc has 10 000 troops on the ground, the vast size of the DRC means that these soldiers are spread thinly over Congolese territory.
Rwandan officials also appear to have doubts about the efficacy of a force that unites soldiers from a variety of countries.
“This thing, where you have Uruguayans and the others, doesn’t work,” Rwanda’s outgoing ambassador to South Africa, Joseph Karamera, told the South African Broadcasting Corporation last week.
In one of the UN’s most recent operations, a buffer zone was established in the North Kivu town of Kanyabayonga to separate government and former rebel soldiers.
“The 10km buffer zone is aimed at keeping government soldiers separated from troops belonging to a breakaway unit which is also in the area. It is hoped that the buffer zone will halt fighting and allow aid to reach displaced civilians,” said the UN in a statement last week, adding: “Monuc says any attempt at crossing the buffer zone will be repulsed immediately.”
Nonetheless, the damage — in terms of massive displacement of Congolese — has already been done: tens of thousands have fled the latest outbreak of fighting in the DRC.
The resultant chaos has made the prospect of holding successful general elections in the DRC, which are scheduled for June 2005, appear remote. The poll is intended to install a permanent government in the DRC, which is currently ruled by an interim administration that includes rebel representatives, opposition politicians, and members of the government that took over from Mobutu. — IPS