The arrest last Thursday of Laurent Nkunda, the leader of the National Congress for the Defence of the People (NCDP) that has been waging a brutal war in the eastern Congo, by Rwanda in a joint military operation with the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has raised hopes that the conflict that has ravaged this region and this vast troubled country might be brought to an end.
This is the first major result of the new found cooperation between the erstwhile foes, Rwanda and the DRC, to eradicate each other's respective rebel forces--Nkunda's NCDP for the DRC and for Rwanda the Hutu militia called the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda which has been plotting in the eastern Congo for a return to Rwanda since the genocide of 1994. In the meantime, there have also been joint efforts by Congolese, Ugandan, and Southern Sudanese forces to root out the forces of Uganda's rebel movement, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
Does this represent a concerted regional drive to bring about peace to a subregion that was the horrific theatre in the late 1990s and early 2000s of what some have called Africa's First World War? The following commentaries give the background to the conflict in the eastern Congo and outline the changing dynamics that brought about the arrest of Nkunda by his former patron, Rwanda, and its implications for the subregion. PT Zeleza, Editor, The Zeleza Post
THE EASTERN DR CONGO: DYNAMICS OF CONFLICT By Gerard Prunier
Since August 2008 the situation in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has grown progressively worse in ways that seem hard to understand. An overview of the events and processes that led to the resurgence of conflict, however, can explain what is happening and what kind of intervention can contribute to resolving it.
The DR Congo
, devastated by years of civil and foreign wars between 1996 and 2003, had managed to sign a peace agreement, disarm most of the combatants, navigate the dangers of a transition period (2003-06), and finally (in July-October 2006) hold successful democratic elections. But the eastern part of the country had never healed. Why?
The heart of the answer is that the eastern problem had existed before the war, was made worse by the war and was not addressed by the peace agreement. The eastern Congo is a dense ethnic mix where Banyarwanda (people of Rwandese ethnic origin) make up a large segment of the population, at least in North Kivu where they represent about 40% of the total (in South Kivu, the Rwandese-speaking Banyamulenge are only about 4%). The high population densities (reaching almost 300 people / square km around Goma) are an important factor in the development of strong tensions around landholding. These tensions were worsened by two factors:
*during the colonial era the Belgians brought thousands of Banyarwanda from Rwanda to work in the Kivus. But they were salaried workers on Belgian plantations and did not own land. When the Belgians left these people wound up as landless peasants since the local tribes (Bahunde, Banyanga, Banande) were not ready to make room for them
*after the 1960-65 civil war which followed the Belgians' departure, Joseph-Désiré Mobutu emerged as the state's authoritarian ruler. His personal secretary Barthélémy Bisengimana was a Rwandese Tutsi who favoured his fellow tribesmen and helped them acquire land illegally. Since the Banyamulenge in South Kivu had fought in the civil war on Mobutu's side, the Rwandophone population became globally identified with Mobutu, a political perception which increased tension with the generally anti-Mobutu eastern tribes.
Rwanda and DRC: context of conflict
By the early 1990s when Zaire (as it had been known since 1971, on Mobutu's orders) began to sink into a catastrophic economic crisis, the land tensions in the east escalated into a localised ethno-civil war. By 1992 there was full-scale fighting in North Kivu, particularly in Masisi, with thousands of casualties. Since neighbouring Rwanda had been in a state of civil war between Tutsi and Hutu since October 1990, local Congolese Banyarwanda crossed the border to enlist in the conflict. One of them was the future General Laurent Nkunda who joined the Rwandese Patriotic Front (RPF), now in power in Kigali.
Then in June 1994, following the Rwandese genocide, hundreds of thousands of Rwandese Hutu peasants crossed the border in the other direction, fleeing the victorious RPF. They were led by soldiers and politicians of the defeated génocidaire regime who were hoping to get Mobutu's support to keep fighting the RPF. Their presence pushed the agrarian tensions to a pitch because they allied themselves with the anti-Tutsi camp in the local civil strife.
Their eventual defeat in November 1996 when the RPF army invaded Zaire did not mark an end to the problems. The invaders also entered the fray, but this time in support of the Tutsi elements. Laurent Nkunda had come back with them and he quickly became one of the leaders of the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Démocratie (RCD) , the "rebel" Congolese movement which was generally perceived as a puppet of the invading Rwandese army (in the 2006 presidential elections, its leader Azarias Ruberwa who was a candidate, got 2% of the vote). During the course of the second civil war (1998-2002), Nkunda and his men fought on the Rwandese side against the Congolese government. All sides committed atrocities as the conflict unfolded, but those committed by the RCD soldiers were particularly hated because they were committed as allies and auxiliaries of a foreign invading army.
The FDLR: a web of influence
Meanwhile a rump of the former Hutu armed refugee groups who had come in 1994 had managed to implant themselves in the area under the name Front Démocratique pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR). In theory they were the enemies of the invading Tutsi-dominated Rwandese army. But in practice it was much more complex:
*in order to finance themselves, they began mining some the non-ferrous metals North Kivu and South Kivu are replete with. But commercialisation was a problem. Some FDLR elements started to work with their RPF "enemies", selling them the columbium-tantalite, the gold or the niobium ore they were mining
*in addition, the RPF had recruited a good number of Hutu soldiers into its ranks, including former génocidaires who had been languishing in jail since 1994. Those started to deal with their FDLR "enemies".
Thus when Rwanda "evacuated" the Kivus in 2002 after the Sun City (South Africa) peace agreement, it maintained a strong presence in the region through demobilised soldiers, through local Tutsi (and even Hutu) who had become their commercial agents, through militiamen and local administrators who, being underpaid, were open to Rwandese financial blandishments. Rwandese businessmen kept exploiting the local mines with the help of locally-recruited artesanal creuseurs (diggers) and flying out the ore in small planes operating from illegal landing strips.
By then the problem was essentially politico-economic: how long could the unnatural FDLR/RPF de facto alliance centred on mining be kept while the political aims of the two partners were fundamentally opposed? In December 2004, The Rwandan president Paul Kagame's then special envoy for the Great Lakes, Richard Sezibera (Rwanda's health minister since 28 October 2008), declared to an interviewer from the International Crisis Group: "The FDLR no longer constitutes an immediate threat to our government but they are a security problem to people's lives, property and to our economic growth".
The FDLR, which still has a fighting strength of perhaps 6,000 men, is in a very ambiguous position because:
*through its genocidal image, it still retains the capacity to trigger strong reactions in Kigali
*at the same time, it has long worked as a partner of some business circles in Kigali
*locally, it is deeply implanted in the Kivus and it has become largely "congolised", including through marriages with local women
*it is still used, off and on, by anti-RPF elements in Kinshasa who continue to smart at the results of the 1998-2003 war - and to dream of making Rwanda pay for the approximately 3.8 million casualties it has caused in the Congo during those years
*nevertheless, the FDLR continues to behave with extreme violence locally, pillaging and raping at the slightest provocation. This is a deliberate move to keep their nuisance capacity visible and avoid being taken for granted by their Kinshasa "allies".
The Laurent Nkunda factor
All this helps explain why General Laurent Nkunda is perhaps the most dangerous segment of the armed groups in the east. To calling Nkunda "a rogue general" as the media does repeatedly is no help in understanding who or what he is. After 1998 he became one of the main RCD officers and he played a key role in the Kisangani massacre of 2002. He was charged with crimes against humanity in September 2005 by the DR Congo government, which casused his to be reluctant to come to Kinshasa when he was appointed to the new army since he feared a trap.
In May-June 2004 he tried to take over Bukavu in a vain attempt to derail the transition to the elections. Then he laid low for a couple of years, still refusing to dissolve his Tutsi forces into the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), the new "national" army. In November 2006 he rebelled again and attacked Goma, probably intending to hold it for ransom and to get some kind of pardon-cum-position for him and his men at the end of the adventure.
After losing about 300 of his fighters to the fire of the Pakistani battalion of the United Nations Mission in DR Congo (Monuc), he went to the negotiation table and accepted the integration of his men into the FARDC. But in a further switch, on 30 December 2006 he created the Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP), a political armed militia which he tried to present as a political tool to "clean up Congolese politics".
At first this did not represent much of a threat. But the problem grew when the Kinshasa government, far from capitalising on the success the July-October 2006 elections represented, seemed to go to sleep after that. For the past two years the Congolese government has looked like a beached whale, incapable of moving in spite of its bulk. This created an opportunity which Nkunda has exploited (see David Mugnier, "How to end a war", 3 December 2007).
Under the fold of his demagogic populist CNDP banner, he started to recruit all sorts of malcontents, mostly Tutsi of course but also Hutu Banyarwanda from Masisi and even a lot of flotsam and jetsam from various tribes who began to drift towards him as the pressure from Monuc and its demobilisation programmes from other regions liberated a lot of former fighters into military unemployment.
Nkunda went further, even across the borders, and started to recruit young unemployed Tutsi men in both Rwanda and Burundi, offering them spurious hopes of non-existent civilian jobs. Some of them deserted and surrendered to Monuc, but his movement grew. By his own account Nkunda (several of whose close allies, including chief-of-staff Bosco Ntaganda, have been indicted by the International Criminal Court) now has around 12,000 men, probably an exaggerated figure. But his men are good, much better than the poorly-disciplined FARDC. The worst aspect of his manoeuvring is that he has kicked the FDLR back into action and reopened all the sores of the east - such as when they massacred a whole village in cold blood at Kanyola in South Kivu in May 2007, having accused the villagers of working with the CNDP.
Why do we see such zigzagging on Nkunda's part? Mostly because there is not a single coherent policy in Kigali to either support or disown him. It depends on the fluctuation of the political atmosphere there (see "The DR Congo's political opportunity", 14 March 2007). Since the well-organised electoral "victories" of the RPF (Paul Kagame got 96% of the vote in the 2003 presidential election and his party got forty-two of the fifty-three contested seats in the September 2008 parliamentary "election", with the "opposition" immediately deciding to support the government), there is no Hutu opposition worth the name. Just mentioning such a term is labeled "divisionism" and can get you twenty years in jail. So the political game is played among Tutsi. And the Tutsi do not agree on how to deal with the Congo in general and with Laurent Nkunda in particular.
Some, like President Kagame himself, want to put the past behind them, develop Rwanda along extremely modernistic lines and turn the country into the Singapore of Africa. But others do not believe in such a possibility and still see the Congo as a mineral mother-lode waiting to be exploiteddo not believe in such a possibility and still see the Congo as a mineral mother-lode waiting to be exploited; they include some of Kagame's closest associates such as the semi-exiled ambassador Kayumba Nyamwasa and army chief-of-staff James Kabarebe (one of the ten Rwandan officials indicted by a French arrest-warrant from 2006, which led to the arrest of Rwanda's head of protocol in Frankfurt on 9 November 2008).
A wider explosion?
The outcome of the United States presidential election on 4 November 2008 is an encouragement for the latter group. After all, it was the Africanists around Bill Clinton (who are now Barack Obama's men and women) who supported the Kigali invasion of the DR Congo while it was Republican secretary of state Colin Powell who brought it to a halt in 2001. Have the Democrats changed their views on the region or do they still believe in the fiction that Rwanda only intervenes in the Congo in order to keep the ugly génocidaires at bay? In any case the situation in the DRC is now more serious than it has been at any point since the signature of the 2002 peace agreement (see From Genocide to Continental War: The ‘Congolese' Conflict and the Crisis of Contemporary Africa, C Hurst, 2008).
But does it actually mean the situation has returned to that of 1998, and the DR Congo is about to explode into another civil war? Probably not. Why? Because there are several fundamental differences:
*Rwanda, even if it is involved, is involved at a marginal and contradictory level .
*in 1998, pro-Kigali elements controlled large segments of the Forces Armées Congolaises (FAC), the then Congolese national army. The initial onslaught was carried out through an internal rebellion of the armed forces. Not so today. Nkunda controls only an army of unofficial militiamen
*in 1998 the regime of Laurent-Désiré Kabila was very weak, hardly legitimate and did not have any serious international support. Today his son Joseph Kabila is strongly supported by the internal community after overseeing a flawed but clearly democratic election
*the Congolese economy was at the time in complete disarray while today it is only in poor shape, with possibilities of picking up
*President Kagame could count on the almost unlimited sympathy of the world which felt guilty for its neglect during the genocide. Not so today. His moral credibility has been seriously damaged by the horrors his troops committed in the DR Congo during 1998-2002 and his political standing is increasingly being questioned, both by legal action going back to the genocide period (reflected in the French indictment and Frankfurt arrest) and by his electoral "triumphs" (which are a throwback to the worst days of fake African political unanimity)
*the diplomatic context, reflected in the current visit to the region of the United Nations envoy (and Nigeria's former president) Olusegun Obasanjo, is more favourable to negotiation
*In 1998 there was no United Nations peacekeeping force in eastern DR Congo. If the international community decides to straighten out its act, Monuc could make the difference.
From Open Democracy
RWANDA: WHY FORMER MILITARY HERO WAS DISOWNED AFTER RAMPAGES IN CONGO By Chris McGreal
The arrest of Laurent Nkunda reflects a dramatic diplomatic shift after tiny but ambitious state found itself on receiving end of international criticism
Tony Blair happened to be in Rwanda at the time the Tutsi rebel general, Laurent Nkunda, was slaughtering his way through eastern Congo late last year.
Blair - who has taken on saving Rwanda as another of his post-premiership missions, inserting people into the offices of the president, prime minister and cabinet in Kigali to help run the government - was keen to talk up the prospects for the tiny central African nation that has made remarkable strides since the 1994 genocide that left about 800,000 Tutsis dead.
But the world's attention was on a different aspect of Rwanda entirely. This time Rwanda was on the receiving end of international criticism for backing Nkunda amid the continuing horror of massacres, mass rape and perpetual refugees in Congo, where about 5 million have died as the result of more than a decade of war and its effects.
Nkunda, once Rwanda's tool in keeping Hutu militias at bay, had become an embarrassment. The rebel general had already spilled a lot of blood before the crisis flared again last October when his forces marched to the edge of Goma in eastern Congo. But on that occasion the world, for once, took notice when Nkunda's men went through the town of Kiwanja systematically killing hundreds of the remaining men, and some families.
In Rwanda President Paul Kagame's government was alarmed. His minority Tutsi-led administration, which drew much of its foreign support from the moral authority of having ended the genocide, was now seen more as perpetrator than victim.
Kagame's grand scheme to project his country as a rapidly modernising state embracing Anglo-Saxon liberal capitalism - even to the extent of switching the education system from French to English - was threatened by its support of Nkunda. Its involvement in Congo sent out the message that Rwanda was really run by another bunch of bloodthirsty warlords.
At that point Nkunda became more of a liability than an asset. His arrest yesterday, as he fled into Rwanda with large amounts of cash, gold and diamonds, is one part of a dramatic diplomatic shift as Kigali tries to detach itself from direct involvement in Congo that used to pay dividends in securing its frontier and vast profits from the plunder of minerals but which has become a political burden.
Nkunda's close ties to Rwanda go back to his days fighting in the rebel army, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), that overthrew the genocidal regime and took power in 1994. He returned to Congo - or Zaire as it then was - and was again drawn in to collaboration with the RPF after it invaded Congo twice in the second half of the 1990s to fight the Hutu militias that had fled there after leading the genocide.
After Rwanda pulled out of Congo in 2003, it saw Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) as a buffer force against the Hutu force, the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which had gained control of swaths of territory on Rwanda's border and kept up the mantra of genocide, threatening to exterminate Tutsis.
But Nkunda, in the name of defending Tutsis, was increasingly bloodthirsty. His forces rampaged through cities such as Bukavu, murdering and raping. They also got into the mining business, getting rich out of plundering gold, diamonds and coltan, a crucial but rare component of mobile phones.
Much of the world turned a blind eye to Rwanda's backing for Nkunda. Officially it had stopped because Kigali was embarrassed by his excesses but there was no doubt that links remained. Nkunda's soldiers included English-speaking Tutsis most likely drawn from Rwandan exiles who grew up in Uganda. The UN observed weapons being shipped through a triangle of land that linked Rwanda, Uganda and Congo. Above all, for a long time Nkunda served Rwanda's interests and Kigali declined to condemn him.
No more. Rwanda is trying to reshape itself as a modern, forward-looking country, far from the semi-fascist state that took hold during the three decades from independence to the genocide. The government's successes can be seen in how the capital has boomed since the genocide. Millions of dollars flowed in to build new hotels now filled with tourists and conferences. Kagame is talking up his country's prospects as a regional information technology hub.
But Congo increasingly threatened to wreck the new image, and Nkunda - who, as he grew more powerful, took to greeting visitors to his hilltop headquarters dressed in flowing white robes, like some messianic figure, with his white pet goat in tow - went from being an asset to a problem.
The political capital that the minority Tutsi-led government of Rwanda could draw on because of western guilt and sympathy after the genocide was increasingly overshadowed by the crimes being committed in Congo.
In December a UN report accused the Rwandan government of fuelling the conflict through covert support to Nkunda. The report also accused the Congolese government of ties to the Hutu militias threatening Rwanda, but that attracted less attention.
Rwanda vigorously denied the accusations but they were well documented and a further embarrassment after the crimes of Nkunda's forces a few weeks earlier. In response, some European governments cut off aid to Rwanda, emphasising to Kigali that it was now no longer viewed as the victim.
Kagame's closest allies overseas, the US and Britain, which provide the bulk of Rwanda's foreign aid and a lot of diplomatic cover, quietly made clear that the conflict in eastern Congo had to be brought to an end.
Last week saw two dramatic and complementary developments. Nkunda faced a revolt within the CNDP, with some of his officers saying they had removed him from command and would no longer fight the Congolese government. At the same time, thousands of Rwandan troops moved across the border in agreement with the Congolese government to purse the Hutu militias controlling swaths of territory.
The deal was in place. Rwanda would neutralise Nkunda and the CNDP so long as the Hutu militias were also confronted. Tellingly, the rebel general fled across the border after he was confronted by a joint Rwanda-Congolese force. Nkunda's benefactor was allied with his enemy in pursuit of him.
Eastern Congo has been here before, and there is unlikely to be a complete halt to the violence for some time. There are still too many armed groups and mining groups with a vested interest in continued instability.
But dealing with the Hutu militia and Nkunda does confront the root causes of the conflict in eastern Congo for the first time, and gives its long suffering people the prospect of hope they have not had for many years.
From The Guardian
A Congolese Rebel Leader Who Once Seemed Untouchable Is Caught By Jeffrey Gettleman
Overnight, the battle in Congo has suddenly shifted.
Gen. Laurent Nkunda, the Congolese rebel leader whose brutal tactics and Congo-size ambitions have threatened to bring about another catastrophic war in central Africa, was arrested late Thursday, removing an explosive factor from the regional equation.
According to United Nations officials and Rwandan authorities, General Nkunda was captured by Rwandan troops as he tried to escape a Congolese-Rwandan offensive that has taken aim at several rebel groups terrorizing eastern Congo.
General Nkunda had seemed untouchable, commanding a hardened rebel force that routinely humiliated Congolese troops and then calmly gliding through muddy villages in impossibly white robes. But he may never have anticipated that his old ally, the Rwandan Army, would take him away.
The surprise arrest could be a major turning point for Congo, which has been mired in rebellion and bloodshed for much of the past decade. It instantly strengthens the hand of the Congolese government, militarily and politically, right when the government seemed about to implode. But it could also empower other, even more brutal rebel figures like Jean Bosco Ntaganda, General Nkunda's former chief of staff, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague for war crimes.
Still, analysts and politicians say they hope that General Nkunda's capture at the hands of Rwanda means that the proxy war between Rwanda and Congo is finally drawing to a close.
A United Nations report in December accused high-ranking Rwandan officials of sending money and troops to General Nkunda, a fellow Tutsi who claimed to be protecting Congolese Tutsi from marauding Hutu militias. This cross-border enmity has been widely blamed for much of the turmoil, destruction, killing and raping that has vexed Congo for years.
John Prendergast, a founder of the Washington-based Enough Project, which campaigns against genocide, called it a "massive turn of events."
"Finally the two countries are cooperating," he said.
Kikaya bin Karubi, a member of Congo's Parliament, said General Nkunda's arrest "could be the beginning of the end of all the misery."
"Look what happened at Kiwanja," he said, referring to a small Congolese town where United Nations officials said General Nkunda's forces went door to door, summarily executing dozens of civilians in November.
Now, if Congo gets its way, General Nkunda will have to face the consequences. The government is urging Rwanda to extradite General Nkunda so he can stand trial in Kinshasa, Congo's capital, where he could face a war crimes tribunal and treason charges, punishable by death.
But Rwandan authorities were tight-lipped on Friday about what they would do with General Nkunda. "I can't speculate," said Maj. Jill Rutaremara, a spokesman for Rwanda's Defense Forces. All he would say was that General Nkunda was "in the hands of Rwandan authorities."
Though General Nkunda never controlled more than a handful of small towns in eastern Congo, he was Congo's No. 1 troublemaker. His troops have been accused of committing massacres dating back to 2002. General Nkunda recently began cultivating national ambitions to overthrow Congo's weak but democratically elected government, which threatened to draw in Congo's neighbors and plunge central Africa into a regional war, something that has happened twice before.
General Nkunda's confidence may have been his undoing. On Thursday night, hundreds of Rwandan troops cornered him near Bunagana. Congolese officials said he refused to be arrested and crossed into Rwanda, where he was surrounded and taken into custody. It is not clear how many men he had with him at the time, but it appears he was taken without a shot.
Just a few days ago, Rwanda sent several thousand soldiers into Congo as part of a joint operation to flush out Hutu militants who had killed countless people in the 1994 Rwanda genocide and were still haunting the hills on Congo's side of the border.
Few expected the Rwandan troops to go after General Nkunda. Not only is he a Tutsi, like Rwanda's leaders, but he had risen to power by fighting these same Hutu militants. Several demobilized Rwandan soldiers recently revealed a secret operation to slip Rwandan soldiers into Congo to fight alongside General Nkunda. He had been trained by the Rwandan Army in the mid-1990s and was widely believed to be an agent for Rwanda's extensive business and security interests in eastern Congo.
But it seems that the Rwandan government abruptly changed its tack, possibly because of the international criticism it has endured for its ties to General Nkunda. Several European countries recently cut aid to Rwanda, sending a strong signal to a poor country that needs outside help. Rwanda may have figured the time was ripe to remove General Nkunda, analysts said.
Earlier this month, some of General Nkunda's top commanders split from him, saying they were fed up with his king-of-the-world brand of leadership. One of those commanders was Mr. Ntaganda. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court have accused him of building an army of child soldiers, a war crime.
But Mr. Ntaganda suddenly switched sides, denouncing General Nkunda and saying that he and his men were now eager to join the Congolese Army, which they had been battling for years. Many analysts believe that the Congolese government promised to try to protect Mr. Ntaganda from being sent to The Hague.
According to Jason Stearns, an analyst who recently served on a United Nations panel examining the conflict: "It's fairly clear that Kigali and Kinshasa have struck a deal. Kinshasa will allow Rwanda onto Congolese soil to hunt down" the Hutu militants, "and in return Rwanda will dethrone Nkunda."
Congolese officials are now talking about restoring full diplomatic relations with Rwanda, which had been suspended for years, and reinvigorating economic ties. But many uncertainties remain, including a possible power scramble by other militant groups hoping to fill the vacuum.
"Nkunda's arrest is part of a larger, radical realignment," Mr. Stearns said. "There are, however, many unknowns and risks."
From The New York Times
WHY RWANDA TURNED AGAINST NKUNDA By Aljazeera
Henri Boshoff, an analyst at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa and an expert on the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), speaks to Al Jazeera about the arrest of General Laurent Nkunda, the leader of the Tutsi-dominated National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).
Boshoff talks about the implications of the joint operation by the Rwandan and Congolese armies to hunt down the Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda (FDLR), a rivial Hutu rebel group to the CNDP, whose members have been hiding in the DRC for 14 years after orchestrating the 1994 Rwandan genocide of Tutsis.
Al Jazeera: It seems this joint operation between DRC and Rwanda is quite unprecedented. What has actually happened for these two neighbours who have been suspicious of each other, if not enemies, for many years to now work together?
Well, it came as a surprise to everybody. I think the start of this co-operation was a month ago.
There was an indication that there was a possible split within the CNDP.
The CNDP chief of staff had indicated that he didn't agree any more with the policies of General Nkunda.
The possible split in the CNDP had given an indication to the Congolese government that this is the time, maybe, to address the Nkunda issue. We also know that last Friday an agreement was signed between the government of the DRC and the breakaway faction under the leadership of chief of staff General John Bosco [Ntaganda] and all military commanders. Within three days, the Rwandans were crossing the border and were in the DRC.
The Congolese government started talking to the Rwandan government on December 4 last year and agreed to carry out a joint operation against the FDLR.
With a split in the CNDP, did Rwanda see Nkunda as a liability that needed to be dealt with right now?
I think the concern was that Nkunda was becoming too ambitious [with] remarks that he was not interested any more in the stability and protection of the minority in North Kivu, but was interested in the whole of the DRC. He was saying he will protect the people of the DRC.
I think that was of concern to Rwanda and this opportunity of a possible split in the CNDP prompted Rwanda to get rid of Nkunda.
There had been a great deal of international pressure in 2008 to solve this problem. Can you give us an idea of how much pressure has been put on Rwanda and DRC to sort the CNDP and Nkunda out?
President [Paul] Kagame [of Rwanda] has always said that Nkunda is a Congolese problem. But there were a lot of allegations of support to Nkunda from inside Rwanda.
I think the beginning of the end was last year when Nkunda overran North Kivu and chased the Congolese army.
That's why Olusegun Obasanjo [a former president of Nigeria] was appointed by Ban Ki-moon [the UN secretary general] as an envoy to the Great Lakes region. But that process can close down; it's finished. The CNDP has given up and is going to be integrated into the Congolese army.
What mechanisms are in place, if any, for Nkunda to be extradited to the DRC?
I was listening to the [Congolese] minister of information Mende [Omalange] and he said they will now contact Rwandan authorities and try to get him extradited to Congo as soon as possible.
They want to charge him before a military court for high treason and war crimes.
The concern is that I am not sure if there is any agreement in place between the two countries.
Secondly, if he is extradited and charged, what will the reaction in the DRC be? I am also concerned that it is not only General Nkunda who has to be charged.
I think war crimes go back to 2004 and even before 2004, when General Nkunda was in RCD-Goma, one of the military factions. His commander, the current Congolese army chief, General [Gabriel] Amisi, was chief of the military area in Kisangani where people who mutinied were killed and thrown in the river.
So the question will immediately be asked: What about General Amisi. But also what about Bosco Ntaganda? There is an International Criminal Court warrant of arrest for him.
How does the UN play a part now? It was relatively inactive during the problems we saw in the DRC in Goma in 2008.
This is the biggest challenge now to come ... because I think the easy part is now over. Why are the Rwandans in the DRC? They are there to go after the FDLR.
This is not the first time the Rwandans are in the DRC.
The Rwandans were in Congo from 1996 to 2002, with more than 20,000 soldiers going after the FDLR and they couldn't get the FDLR.
Now they have 3,500 to 4,000 soldiers and they say they need 15 to 20 days [to get the FDLR].
It does not make sense. I don't see how they are going to get the FDLR. The FDLR has been living in the DRC for 14 years. They are married to the Congolese. They have got their children there, and furthermore they also say they are preparing themselves.
We know what happened last year when General Nkunda and the Congolese army put troops together to go after FDLR. It didn't succeed. It had to be stopped because 250,000 people were displaced and hundreds of people were killed.
Monuc [the UN peace keeping force in the DRC] is bracing itself for a repeat of that.
To make matters worse, Monuc is not part at all of this new joint operation. They have not been informed about it, and they are preparing themselves now for human rights violations and they know they have got the mandate and they must protect civilians.
How are they going to do that? We are going to see tough times in the weeks to come.
Source: Aljazeera
Rwanda: FDLR Begin to Surrender in Face of Joint Rwanda-DRC Offensive By James Karuhanga
Elements of the Ex-FAR/Interahamwe have started feeling the heat of the on-going Rwanda-Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) joint military operation to disarm and repatriate them and have started to surrender.
The joint operation launched early this week was agreed upon by Rwanda and the DRC to rout out elements grouped under the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR).
Congolese army (FARDC) spokesman in the eastern part of the country, Capt. Olivier Hamuli, confirmed that some rebels had so far surrendered.
"Yes, we have them and we will certainly show them off for everyone to see tomorrow (Friday) morning," Capt. Hamuli, told The New Times last evening over the phone.
FDLR, remnants of those responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, have largely been operating from the eastern part of the DR Congo from where they have continued to commit atrocities against the local population.
According to Hamuli, a joint DRC-Rwanda military operation hatched and endorsed last year was operationalised by FARDC troops and intelligence units of the Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) early this week.
This partnership has recently expanded, with of other rebel groups - the National Congress for the Defence of People (CNDP) and PARECO, the Coalition of Congolese Patriotic Resistance joining the operation.
This too, was confirmed in a press release by the FARDC's eastern military command based in the border town of Goma.
"The government of DRC salutes this excellent gesture and courage by various compatriots," the statement says about the CNDP and PARECO groups, "of whose integration into the FARDC, no longer has any shade of doubt."
"A strong message is therefore extended to all ex-FAR/FDLR and Interahamwe as well as all other armed groups to seize this opportunity to lay down arms and adhere to the on-going processes so that we can, together, consolidate peace and security for our respective populations," the statement concludes.
Rwanda has sent an intelligence unit into the Congo which is working with the Congolese authorities to remove the menace of the FDLR.
The offensive against the FDLR follows a series of meetings between Rwanda and DRC officials into which Rwanda had emphasized the threat posed by FDLR was not only against Rwanda but Congo as well.
From: Allafrica.com
CONTINUED PURSUIT OF LRA QUESTIONED By Rosebell Kagumire
As operation Lightening Thunder enters a second month, many are questioning the value of the military campaign waged by Uganda and its allies against the Lord's Resistance Army, LRA, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC.
Analysts warn that Ugandan, Sudanese and Congolese forces may be in for long war in DRC, and wonder whether it's winnable.
They point out that Uganda battled the LRA in northern Uganda for 20 years, but was unable to defeat the rebels or capture their leader Joseph Kony, who with his top commanders has been sought by the International Criminal Court, ICC, in The Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity since July 2005.
Uganda was quick to say the operation would be short-lived when it launched a mid-December air strike on LRA camps in northeastern DRC.
"In a matter of weeks we will have captured Kony or he will have surrendered," Foreign Affairs Minister Sam Kuteesa told the press at the time.
Later, Uganda president Yoweri Museveni called the operation a success, saying that Kony's camps had been destroyed and his ability to wage war was diminished.
But there's little evidence to back up these claims. Though scattered, the LRA has killed as many as 500 people in the region since the attack.
Last week, a United Nations team said more than 100 women were reportedly raped in just two days in the towns of Faradje and Tadu alone.
Ndebesa Mwangushya, a history professor at Makerere University in Kampala, said the likelihood of Uganda finding or defeating Kony is slim.
"The Ugandan army is fighting a highly mobile group, which [knows] the jungle, and this plays to the rebels' advantage," said Mwangushya. "Unless Ugandan troops have highly sophisticated equipment, the war will be a long [and] fruitless one."
Questions have been asked whether the operation was poorly planned and ill-timed, or badly executed.
Recent reports indicate that bad weather hampered the launch of the attack, which was initially set for 7.30 am on December 14, but was delayed by four hours.
Warning of the attack apparently leaked to the LRA, giving Kony, his top commanders and many of his fighters, time to escape.
Museveni said that radio monitoring devices were found at Kony's camp, and recent statements from survivors of the attack confirm that Kony fled before it was launched.
Mwangushya notes that the Uganda government has little support in the north where Kony has a network of allies.
"Kony has informers, and the military is no exception," said Mwangushya. "We can't rule that out."
Supporters of the operation claim that Kony was flushed from his base in the DRC's Garamba National Park - where he had been based for past three years - and therefore it can be called a success.
Indeed, it seems, Uganda may commit more troops into the operation.
Army chief General Aronda Nyakairima recently said the LRA was on the run and more soldiers were needed to finish them off. That claim has been questioned, since most reports indicate the LRA has split into small units operating in different locales.
Meanwhile, support for the war is faltering in the Ugandan parliament.
"The army should accept the operation is not succeeding, instead of wasting national resources," said Professor Morris Ogenga Latigo, leader of opposition in parliament, who is from northern Uganda, and a member of the Acholi ethnic group.
"This operation was not strategically justified," Latigo continued. "It failed to decisively to take [out] the LRA leadership.
"Any military success is accompanied by evidence. But what we are seeing in this war is the military saying we have discovered graves and guns."
He asked why the military was not allowing independent confirmation of the operation, "No journalist is yet to be allowed to see this, which adds to the argument that this is one of the most botched operations this government has ever done."
As Uganda plans to send more troops to DRC, people of northern Uganda, which was where Kony committed most of his crimes, worry of an LRA return.
"People in my district in Kitgum, especially [areas] that border Sudan, have been moving back to camps," said member of parliament Beatrice Anywar.
As controversy around the operation continues, calls are increasing for a ceasefire and reassessment.
"The ceasefire is the only reasonable thing to do now," Latigo said. "This would give government a chance to review their military plans which have not produced any tangible results so far.
"It would give a chance to again try and engage the LRA peacefully."
From: Allafrica.com
