After a three-month stand-off between rebel General Laurent Nkunda and the Congolese army, the situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has, over the past week, slipped into an open conflict between the two camps, with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the DRC (Monuc) helping out on the government’s side.
Following attacks last week by Nkunda’s troops on Congolese army positions in North Kivu, the gloves have come off, and the Congolese army is hitting back by pouring troops and weaponry into the province, where Nkunda has been based since he refused to join the national army in 2003.
After an agreement was signed earlier this year by Nkunda and the Congolese government to bring his troops under the Congolese army’s central military command, the so-called “mixed” brigades composed of Nkunda and the Congolese army launched joint operations against the Forces Democratiques pour la liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), the Rwandan Hutu militia responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda in which 800 000 Rwandan Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed.
However, the operations soon faltered as it became clear that Nkunda continued to maintain command over his troops and was pursuing his own agenda against the FDLR. Nkunda, a Tutsi from Rutshuru in North Kivu, claims to be defending the rights of the Congolese Tutsi community and has accused the Congolese government of actively supporting the FDLR.
One of Nkunda’s main demands is the return to the DRC of 60 000 Congolese Tutsi living in refugee camps in neighbouring Rwanda. But this, he says, will not happen as long as the FDLR remain in the eastern DRC, as their presence threatens the Tutsi community.
“Their presence prevents the Tutsis from returning. They have imported the spirit of genocide from Rwanda … The first thing we need for reconciliation is security. The Tutsis can’t come here until the FDLR leave.”
The escalating conflict between Nkunda and the Congolese army — which Nkunda last week referred to as a “state of war” — is now distracting attention and resources away from operations to disarm the FDLR.
It is also exacerbating the dire humanitarian crisis in the province. In North Kivu, 224 000 people have already been displaced since the start of this year, and this week the UN High Commission for refugees warned that hundreds of thousands more could be affected by the current violence.
“We fear that the pursuit of a military situation to the problems in North Kivu would further worsen the province’s humanitarian crisis through the potential displacement of hundreds of thousands of additional Congolese civilians,” UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond said.
Of the one million displaced people in the DRC, more than 600 000 are from North Kivu.
For the past several months, the UN has been urging the parties to negotiate, but it has now also started to provide logistical assistance to the Congolese army in its operations against Nkunda. Monuc’s mandate also allows it to engage in military operations against Nkunda in much the same way it has worked with the Congolese army to forcibly disarm militias in Ituri.
Meanwhile, talks this week between Rwanda and the DRC about the situation in North Kivu focused on the FDLR. Rwandan foreign minister Charles Murigande said: “The forces that committed the genocide in Rwanda, that have been rebaptised FDLR, remain politically and militarily active. We must also remember that it is the presence of these … Interahamwe in eastern DRC that has forced tens of thousands of refugees to leave their country and take refuge in Rwanda and Burundi, and that this is what has given birth to phenomena such as … Nkunda.”
Murigande also appeared to justify Nkunda’s actions, saying “[Nkunda wants] to protect populations which are in insecurity”.
The presence of the FDLR has been at the heart of the problem between Rwanda and the DRC for the past 13 years. After he fell out with his Rwandan allies in 1998, Laurent Kabila actively supported the FDLR, recruiting them to fight alongside the Congolese army during the 1998-2002 war. The presence of the perpetrators of the genocide in eastern DRC was also the motivating factor for Rwanda’s repeated military interventions in the country and its support for the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD) rebel group, which controlled the eastern DRC for four years.
According to a 2002 bilateral peace agreement between Rwanda and the DRC, Rwanda withdrew its troops from the eastern DRC by the end of that year. In exchange, the Congolese government was to disarm the FDLR. However, the Congolese government failed to live up to its commitment.
Efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement between the FDLR and the Rwandan government were torpedoed in 2005, when the Rwandan government rejected FDLR demands for national political dialogue.
It is often suggested that the FDLR’s presence in the eastern DRC provides Rwanda with a welcome excuse to intervene in the region, while many have wondered why the Rwandan army did not manage to track down the FDLR during the four years it occupied the area.
Nkunda, who was a senior commander in the Rwandan-backed RCD at the time, says that eliminating the FDLR was not on the agenda “That was not their objective. Their big objective was to take power.”
Many believe that Nkunda’s links with Rwanda remain intact and that he and his forces receive support from the Rwandan government. But, both Nkunda and the Rwandan government reject this accusation and, so far, no one has publicly provided proof of such a link.
Following the talks this week, Murigande merely said that Nkunda was a Congolese problem.