Regional
Kinshasa’s lack of intelligence speaks political, security instability
When
a country does not have the right intelligence, it makes wrong decisions. That
is why the Democratic Republic of Congo is a disaster.
“Tshisekedi's
political and military authorities have been drawing on the human and technical
intelligence produced by MONUSCO to plan a military offensive,” Africa
Intelligence reported in early March.
The
weakness of the Congolese army is coupled with the limited intelligence of both
the National Intelligence Agency (ANR), as well as the General Directorate of Migration
(DGM).
Their
bosses, including National Security Council (CNS) head, Jean-Claude Bukasa, and
ANR chief, Jean-Hervé Mbelu Biosha, are regularly criticized by their Great
Lakes region and Western counterparts.
Sources
say that the Congolese intelligence services suffer from a lack of skills and capacity
to process the intelligence gathered and technological means, all of which
limit their ability to provide their political authorities with strategic
information.
The
resurgence of the M23 rebels which triggered tensions between Kigali and
Kinshasa made President
Félix Tshisekedi to sound war drums. However, his army of over 130,000
active personnel lacks capability considering its habitual defeats by small
armed groups.
“Congolese
army units are again resorting to the discredited and damaging practice of
using abusive armed groups as their proxies,” wrote Thomas Fessy, a senior researcher
at Human Rights Watch.
On
May 8 and 9, leaders of several Congolese armed groups, some of them rivals,
met in the remote town of Pinga and agreed to a non-aggression pact forming a
“patriotic” coalition to join forces with the Congolese army against “the
aggressor,” namely the M23. Two FDLR senior commanders were also present.
The
FDLR genocidal militia committed countless rapes and other acts of sexual
violence, killed hundreds of civilians over the years in eastern DRC, hacking
them to death with machetes or hoes, or burning them in their homes, as HRW
reported in October 2022.
On
October 31, an anonymous FARDC Colonel wrote an open letter to Tshisekedi,
showing how their army’s failures resulted from entrusting command to ‘mafia
vultures and untrained’ officers.
“Doesn't
it bother you to cry out against Rwanda's aggression in front of all
international bodies when you do nothing to equip your armed forces in order to
develop their operational capacities? For a country like the DRC, it's a
shame,” reads the letter.
The
Congolese state has suffered
from corruption, governance deficit and impunity for long because of lack of
political will to investigate alleged wrongdoings.
During
a March joint press conference in Kinshasa with his Congolese counterpart,
France’s Emmanuel Macron emphasized the need for Congolese authorities to look
within for solutions to their security challenges, instead of always
putting the blame on others.
“Since
1994, you have never been able to restore the military, security or
administrative sovereignty of your country. It's a reality. We must not look
for culprits outside,” Macron said.