Opinion
Tensions with Rwanda have always been a political solution for Kinshasa
In
January 2009, I was on my way to meet Gen Laurent Nkunda. Then, one good
evening around 10pm at a news stand in Wandegeya, Kampala, I read a New Vision
headline “Rwanda arrests Gen. Laurent Nkunda”. I had just traveled
from Washington DC and was doing research on insecurity in the Great Lakes
region.
A
Congolese rwandophone had put me in contact with Nkunda’s assistant who was
waiting for me in Kigali. The assistant was supposed to guide me to Masisi in
North Kivu, the then stronghold of the National Congress for the Defence of the
People (CNDP), the forerunner to the 23rd Movement (M-23).
Citing
officials of both Rwanda and Congo, The New Vision reported that Nkunda had
been arrested “after he resisted a joint Rwandan-Congolese military operation
designed to pacify eastern Congo”. He has been under custody in Rwanda ever
since.
I
never got to interview Nkunda but I spoke to many senior officials of different
groups in the DRC, in the army and the civil service, as well as UN officials
of MONUC (renamed MONUSCO in 2010) officials. Anti-Rwanda hostility and related
tensions were high as I approached different officials for interviews. The Bukavu
border, for instance, was only open until 6 pm.
A
question comes to mind immediately, given current circumstances: how come
Rwanda arrested Gen Nkunda despite claims that it supported the CNDP, perhaps
the most successful rebellion against Kinshasa at the time, which had seen
large territories in North Kivu such as Masisi and Rutshuru fall to the
insurgents.
A
superficial reading of armed conflicts in the Congo, that focuses on that
country’s minerals and how they fuel wars, fails to grasp why Rwanda got
involved in that country to begin with, and appreciate its links to M-23 and
CNDP before it.
Rwanda’s
foray into the Congo was reluctant but necessary. It was the only way to avoid
descending deeper into protracted conflict and genocide, both of which would
have made the Central African Republic, and Somalia at its worst, seem stable.
In
1995 when the genocidal forces fled from Rwanda to the then Zaire (now DRC),
they set out to reorganize and attack RPF-led Rwanda, with the diplomatic
support of France. Humanitarian aid meant for Rwanda was being channeled across
the border to the refugee camps under the control of the same genocidaires in
eastern Congo. Zaire’s then President, Mobutu Sese Seko, who had positioned
himself as a mentor to the then deceased President Juvenal Habyarimana of
pre-genocide Rwanda, saw himself as the guarantor of the security of these
Rwandans. He did not away shy from supplying them with weapons while also
helping the French to channel ammunitions to them.
In
Rwanda, the then Vice President and Minister of Defense, Gen Paul Kagame,
pleaded with Mobutu to work together with the new government to disarm the
genocidaires. The pleas fell on deaf ears. Both Mobutu - and the French
political and military elite - believed the new government in Kigali could not
possibly last long.
In
interviews which I conducted with my colleague Frederick Golooba-Mutebi with
two senior former commanders of the Habyarimana-era Forces Armees Rwandaises on
separate occasions, Generals Paul Rwarakabije and Jerome Ngendahimana who
had returned to Rwanda and were serving the new government, told us that they
too were sure the new leadership would not last. They said they knew that the
RPF would struggle to win over the people inside Rwanda because of the ideology
they had consumed for long.
While
in the jungles of Congo, they were sure that their reorganization and plans to
invade Rwanda had support inside and outside the country. At the time, the most
radical elements were still dominant in that insurgent. They believed that the
biggest mistake they had made while still in charge in Rwanda was to have not
finished “the job” of exterminating the Tutsi. A key part of their agenda once
they recaptured power in Rwanda, was to start where they had stopped and
complete the genocide.
Meanwhile,
as he contemplated how to prevent the insurgents invading the country, Paul
Kagame told the international community that if the camps in which they were
hiding were not dismantled and their reorganization stopped, Rwanda would deploy and neutralize the security threat they
posed by the genocidal forces. Mobutu believed Kagame was bluffing.
However, people who know Kagame also know that bluffing does not count among
his strengths.
In
1996, the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo emerged as
a counterweight to Mobutu’s recalcitrance. Led by Joseph Desire Kabila and
consisting of individuals and groups with various grievances against the Mobutu
government, they spearhead the liberation of their country from Mobutu’s
kleptocracy. Alongside them was the Rwandese Patriotic Army, on mission to
dismantle the genocidaire-infested refugee camps and pursue the genocidal
forces. Rwanda’s intervention had broad regional support. The then President of
Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, told international
media that African leaders had decided to arm Rwanda and help the
post-genocide government fight against the genocidaires.
The
alliance between Desire Kabila’s rebellion and Rwanda intersected at these
shared interests: to overthrow a kleptocratic leadership and neutralize the genocidaires.
However,
as it turned out Kabila was not any better than Mobutu. He quickly concentrated
power around his Baluba ethnic group, as Mobutu had done with the people of
Equateur. The excluded began to contemplate settling grievances around exclusion
in military terms. Internal politics had forced Kabila to cut his alliance with
Rwanda. As domestic grievances mounted, Kabila worked harder to prove his
nationalist credentials through hostility against Rwanda. In so doing he went a
step too far. As Mobutu had done with Habyarimana’s Forces Armees Rwandaises
(FAR), Kabila entered an alliance with the genocidal Forces Democratiques de la
Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR). History was repeating itself. Rwanda pleaded with
Kabila against this alliance while also trying to protect him against domestic
political pressure. Kabila was between a rock and a hard place. He chose the
alliance and told Rwanda to go to hell. For Rwanda, it was clear that any
reorganisation of the FAR through FDLR meant that hell was not too far
off.
Soon
enough, the FDLR began to make incursions into Rwanda at night and withdrawing
back into DRC during daytime. The objective was to make Rwanda ungovernable,
including by making the people feel that the government lacked the capacity to
protect them. As the war against the insurgency became protracted inside
Rwanda, a force was deployed to the DRC to cut the insurgents’ supply routes
and deny them a viable rear base.
In
the process, the second Congo war that attracted at least six African armies
began and ended through negotiations in 2002 when the invading countries agreed
to withdraw their troops.
The
war ended but the FDLR threat has remained. It has, from time to time,
been resuscitated, whenever the authorities in Kinshasa have felt political
pressure stemming from their internal shortcomings. The FDLR became and
remains a useful tool for the political calculations of incumbent presidents in
the DRC whenever elections are approaching.
The
2006 national elections divided the country in half: the West supported Jean
Pierre Bemba and the East Joseph Kabila. Kabila was declared the winner amidst
accusations of serious rigging. Kabila had much work to do to bring the West
into his camp if he was to govern the country as a whole. Bemba refused to
recognize Kabila as the winner, putting the latter’s credibility in Kinshasa
and the entire western part of the country in serious doubt.
Kabila
sought relief in his predecessors’ playbook. He revived the FDLR. With
provincial tensions in high gear the gambit worked miracles. At the time, the
leadership of the FDLR had withdrawn to minerals trading. Its members had
largely integrated into local Congolese communities. With Kabila’s courting,
however, they reorganized themselves into an active armed force.
In
the run-up to the 2008 provincial elections, kinyarwanda-speaking communities
(rwandophones) became targets as a strategy for political mobilization. Their
participation in the political process was blocked, because they were
considered to be people of doubtful nationality “nationalite douteuse.”
In
much of the Kivus (north and south), they could vote but could not front
candidates for election. The violence they were subjected to led to the
emergence of Nkunda’s CNDP, which presented itself as a movement for
“self-defense.”
Once
again, a natural alliance between those facing exclusion in the DRC and a
country preoccupied by existential threats emanating from the DRC,
emerged.
To
his credit, and unlike Mobutu, Joseph Kabila took the relationship between
Nkunda’s armed group and Rwanda seriously. After a series of protracted
negotiations, it was agreed that the armies of the two governments would work
together to pacify the region in what was dubbed Operation Umoja Wetu I and
II.
However,
domestic pressure in Kinshasa forced Kabila to abandon this initiative, which
had restored confidence and trust between the authorities of the two countries
and their respective armies.
The
aftermath of the 2011 elections in the DRC and the emergence of the M-23 follow
this pattern: the collapse of domestic politics, hostility towards Congolese
rwandophones, the revival of FDLR as a sure way to get Kigali interested.
The
resultant diplomatic and military tensions are usually sufficient diversion for
the authorities in Kinshasa to survive another election. Or they become the
election itself, like it was with Mobutu who believed that all that Rwanda
could do is bluff.
Rwanda
perceives no active threat from Congo as long as the FDLR are
demobilized.
Nkunda’s
arrest was the result of his failure to keep up with changes in the context and
his insistence on marching on to Kinshasa, even after the entirely practical
alliance he had with Kigali had collapsed after the two governments decided to
work together.
Herein
lies the solution to the intermittent tensions: demobilize the FDLR for good,
and respect the rights of Congo’s Kinyarwanda speakers whose only relationship
with Rwanda is their language and cultural heritage.
Time
is a great teacher. I now have the answers to many of the questions I would
have asked Gen Nkunda had our meeting in Masisi taken place as planned in
January 2009.
Source:
www.newtimes.co.rw