Regional
The M23 demon: Could Rwanda ultimately invade eastern Congo?
To
understand the historical roots of the crisis in the Democratic Republic of
Congo, explored last week in “The M23 problem,” it is critical to appreciate that the
DRC, like most African countries, came to be after the Berlin Conference of
1884-1885, that divided Africa.
It
was offered to the King Léopold II of Belgium to fund his reign over a new
divided kingdom at the heart of Europe, made of French and Dutch peoples who
couldn’t see eye to eye and the Flemish and Walloons. At the time, in 1894,
Rwanda and Burundi were allocated to “German Tanzania”.
It
is at the end of the First World War that defeated Germany would lose its
colonies, and Rwanda and Burundi’s “ownership” would shift to Belgium.
Africans,
whose immense territory was being divided, weren’t invited to the table, and
indeed families and communities found themselves in two — sometimes three —
different countries overnight. It didn’t matter at the time because the said
borders were more for the colonial administration and didn’t affect the daily
life of the “natives”.
The
prevailing pan-African zeitgeist during struggles for independence in the 1950s
gave our founding fathers an illusion that all freed African nations would live
in borderless harmony until the creation of the United African States. They
thus decided, upon the establishment of the organisation of African Unity (OAU)
in 1963, to maintain the colonial borders “as is”, for there were more pressing
matters for the new nations, including the freedom of fellow African states
that were still in bondage. The question of border disputes then seemed
subsidiary.
Not
any more. Today “Ba Rwandais” and “Kagame” are the object of vitriol in DRC.
For organising weekly Twitter spaces with Congolese, where at times I find
myself alone, I take a lot of credit in Kigali. Rwandans are unanimous, my
patience with Congolese on Twitter is nothing short of subhuman! Rwandans are
many on the space, joining to be baffled for four hours before they sleep; they
simply can’t comprehend what is going on!
Dutch disease
Minerals are a big part of the “DRC problem”. They are
mapped and the industry is somewhat organised — contrary to perceptions by
outsiders — except the country suffers a serious “Dutch disease”. The entire
economy revolves around the extractives industry, with scant infrastructure to
transform them, and a corrupt tracking system.
Having
travelled to Kinshasa twice in the past six months to look into minerals and
private air transport, I learned that small Russian planes, Antonovs, are the
preferred workhorse because they can land and take off without needing much
runway. And why is that? Because the said Russian birds ship raw minerals
straight from the mines at the heart of the Congo to destinations unknown.
It
costs $200,000 to get an airline licence, and the small cargo business is
booming. It isn’t uncommon to meet a random chap around a hotel in Kinshasa
claiming to own a carré minnier – which means a mine
concession with unspoken reserves of gold, diamond, tin, lithium, and just
about any precious material you seek!
Most
of these are go-betweens who know a guy that knows a guy. However, if the title
is indeed “legit,” two things are certain: The chap in question has never set
foot in his own el dorado, and no one knows exactly if the concession is worth
a thing. All he wants is a rich foreigner chasing a piece of the Congolese
proverbial riches to take the said concession off his hands at as much money as
he could get — it could be a million dollars, or a thousand, depending on his
luck.
The
mine, the object of the carré minnier at the hotel, could
indeed be abundant or dry. Buying that piece of paper is like playing the
lottery. In spite of this, the fallacy that Rwanda exploits Congolese minerals
seems to prevail. And it feeds a hate speech campaign against Kigali.
“What
you are doing is justifying the enemy’s war,” said every Congolese politician
after horrific images of Congolese Tutsi being harassed, burned alive, killed,
and at times eaten.
The
“enemy” in question is M23. Did any official come out to say, “stop killing
Tutsi, they are Congolese citizens, and they deserve to be protected”?
Dr Denis Mukwege, the Nobel Prize laureate said: “What I
saw on social media is unacceptable! You are giving our aggressors the right to
steal our land.” So “the aggressor wants to steal our land” is established.
Land versus People
“Let
them withdraw into Uganda while we study their case,” so declared the late
Juvenal Habyarimana, Rwandan president in the early 1990s, after the Rwandan
Patriotic Front had attacked Rwanda and seized territory. For 30 years, he had
denied them a peaceful return to their home, insisting that Rwanda was too
small and too poor; that the only available land was the national reserves for
animals that attract tourists; that Tutsi refugees, therefore, were to apply
for citizenship in their host countries. Later, in the preparation for the
genocide, theories emerged that Tutsi were actually not Rwandan, that they were
aliens from Abyssinia, at times, Egypt.
The
same is being said of Tutsi Congolese, in the media by both officials and
troubadours from Kinshasa to eastern DRC, through Brussels and London, wherever
there is a “real” Congolese with an internet connection. It is uncanny that
people base their arguments on a line drawn three centuries ago in Berlin to
define King Léopold II’s personal garden to affirm that minerals stayed on the
DRC side, while Tutsi stayed on the Rwandan, both unable to cross.
Source of protracted war
In
the previous issue, I discussed how Rwanda invaded Zaire, ousting Mobutu Sese
Seko and installing Laurent Desire Kabila in 1997. On the day Kabila Snr
announced that the Rwandan army should depart Congo “manu military,” he did so
with no alternative force to ensure security in his immense territory, and the
population at the time made of 45 million people. The defeated Forces Armee
Zairoise (FAZ), Mobutu’s army, were either in disarray or in exile.
When
the Rwandans departed, he called upon the former Rwandan genocidal forces, the
FDLR, some from travelling as far as Cameroon, transported them to Kisangani
into training camps, and promised to offer them sanctuary if they could help
fight Rwandans. To this day, the military architecture of the DRC is broken, with an amalgam of militias.
The
successors to Laurent Kabila did not build a strong national army, making it
possible for all sorts of militias, now counted in hundreds, to occupy the
vacuum and thrive.
The
militias are extremely violent, wreaking havoc and carrying out massacres of
civilians in eastern DRC, despite the UN force (Monusco) and the FARDC, both
deployed in Kivu with the very mission to eradicate them. Thus, on the night of
July 12, six people were killed in Rwangoma neighbourhood in Beni town, North
Kivu, allegedly by Ugandan Islamist rebels of ADF-Nalu. These killings followed others by the same group a
week before, but politicians are silent about it. But they care a lot about
M23.
Old problems, old tactics
M23,
which stands for “Movement of March 23rd,” as in March 23rd 2009, when peace
accords were signed between then DRC president Joseph Kabila and the National
Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP).
As a
result, on November 20, 2012, the CNDP rebel group re-baptised itself M23, took
control of Goma, the provincial capital of Kivu and one of the most important
cities of the DRC with over a million people, causing an international outcry.
At the time, pressure was put on the Rwandan government, which was accused of
supporting the rebel outfit, a crime by association, given that its leaders had
once been part of the rank and file of the RPF campaign of the nineties to
liberate Rwanda, as well as Rwanda’s expedition into Zaire under a previous
umbrella, AFDL, led by Kabila Snr, which ousted Mobutu.
The
M23 was requested to relinquish Goma, with the promise that its demands were
finally going to be attended to. M23 announced a unilateral ceasefire and its
political wing retreated into Rwanda while the military wing was disarmed and
encamped in Uganda.
In
2017, M23 led by their “insufferable” commander Sultani Makenga briefly resumed
their insurgency. While the attacks didn’t achieve much, they have been living
in DRC forests since, until recently when they reemerged and seized the town of Bunagana at the
border with Uganda, throwing the region into turmoil.
M23
demands, just like their strategy to have them fulfilled by the DRC government,
haven’t changed: the implementation of the peace agreement signed in Nairobi in
December 2013, stipulating amnesty to all M23 fighters who did not commit war
crimes and crimes against humanity; registration of M23 as a legitimate
political party so that it can exercise politics in DRC; and repatriation of
“Rwandophone” Congolese sheltered in refugee camps in Rwanda and Uganda.
After
their capture of Bunagana, the Congolese government reacted by declaring them a
“terrorist organisation,” closing the door to possible negotiations or the
implementation of the Nairobi accords.
The
DRC government spokesperson accused Rwanda of supporting the M23, before withdrawing the licence of Rwanda’s airline RwandAir to
operate in DRC and cancelling all bilateral trade agreements.
The
position adopted by Tshisekedi’s government was detrimental to Rwanda, indeed,
and it was a double-edged sword: the Congolese took it on face value, thereby
starting a witch-hunt against everyone who “looks” Rwandan and tying the hands
of Tshisekedi to negotiate with an M23 that seems to grow in strength every
day, defeating the FARDC and capturing new ground.
If
the Congolese public isn’t ready to accept the M23, it is because the
government has breathed air into an imagined nexus between M23 and the Rwanda
Defence Forces.
Therefore
the task of President Tshisekedi is difficult; whenever he meets his regional
counterparts, including the two mediators, João Laurenco of Angola and Uhuru
Kenyatta of Kenya, he cannot count on populist arguments to sway them. He is
compelled to rely on facts and, whenever he goes back home, he finds the ground
inauspicious to take sensible steps to end the conflict.
It
is like the Greek mythology of Laius, Oedipus’ father, who, terrified by the
prophecy of the oracle that his son would grow up to kill him, unwittingly
engineers the conditions to ensure Oedipus ultimately kills him.
With
the insistence that Rwanda is behind the M23, the continued killings of
Congolese Tutsi, the DRC may soon leave Rwanda no choice but to conduct
military operations in its territory. What are these conditions?
To
date, while the DRC government has made M23 a pariah by calling them
terrorists, Rwanda says they have somehow “mainstreamed” the FDLR. Kigali has
made no mystery about its weariness with the collaboration between FARDC and
FDLR.
Rwanda
is the custodian of the Kigali Principles on the protection of civilians, and a
champion of the “Responsibility to Protect,” known as R2P; an international
principle, adopted in 2005, in response to the failure of the international
community to stop the Genocide Against the Tutsi as well as the crimes against
humanity in former Yugoslavia. This means that if Tutsi are killed in DRC for
their alleged affiliation to Rwanda and nothing is done, Rwanda might be forced
to go in to save them.
To
date, the FARDC have shelled Rwandan territory on three occasions. A fourth
might be the casus beli.
Experience
has taught us that whenever Rwanda embarks on such (mis)adventure, it usually
ends in Kinshasa, and that is not in anyone’s interest.
M23
is part of the solution, but DRC is making it the problem, sadly. There would
be nothing more ironic than to be defeated by an army whose only demand is to
join and fight on your side, or to ostracise a people whose dream is to be
accepted by you.
Many
analysts agree that people are safer in areas controlled by M23 than they are
in areas controlled by FARDC, Monusco, or indeed militias, to quote Bintu
Keita, Monusco representative in DRC. M23 is conducting itself more like a
regular army than a rebel group.
While
Bintou’s remarks inferred covert Rwandan support of the militia group, it also
revealed discipline and chain of command inherent to the “homogeneous” rebel
movement.
M23
should be helping DRC to end all the 100-plus militias, to bring peace to their
native eastern DRC, if only Congolese politicians could accept them.
Source: www.theeastafrican.co.ke