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Congo-Kinshasa: Nkunda Took Advantage of a Power Vacuum
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The East African (Nairobi)
ANALYSIS
6 November 2007
Posted to the web 6 November 2007
Zachary Ochieng
Nairobi
When the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a Tutsi-dominated rebel group based in Uganda, defeated the Rwandan government in 1994, more than a million Rwandans fled to Congo (then Zaire).
Among them were members of the Interahamwe militia and Rwandan army soldiers who had committed genocide in their country. Thousands of the militia and soldiers settled among civilians in refugee camps near the Rwandan border where they regrouped and rearmed to resume the war against the new government in Kigali. In 1996 Rwanda, sent its troops across the border into Congo to forestall any possible attack.
Rwandan soldiers, together with their Congolese Tutsi allies, attacked the camps, killing many civilians as well as armed combatants. Hundreds of thousands of survivors returned to Rwanda, many against their will, and hundreds of thousands of others fled into the forest where many would finally be killed by Rwandan and Congolese Tutsi troops or die from lack of food, water and diseases.
In the decade since the attacks on the refugee camps, Rwandan combatants have tried several times to reorganise their forces in eastern Congo. The Forces Democratiques de Liberation du Rwanda (FDLR), which is the result of the most recent such effort, comprises groups of combatants scattered in North and South Kivu.
Although sometimes called Interahamwe from the infamous name of the 1994 genocidal militia, most FDLR combatants played no role in the genocide. Some are too young to have been active in 1994; others are Congolese who joined the combatant groups for the immediate profit to be gained from military activity. Some FDLR live in relatively harmonious relations with the Congolese communities around them, while others engage in ruthless exploitation and predatory attacks.
Such relationships depend on the relative strength of the FDLR groups and of the local authorities, and are also subject to rapid change depending on military or political conditions.
In the past decade, Congolese national governments showed general tolerance for the several Rwandan rebel organisations in eastern Congo. In 1998, Congolese national army soldiers joined forces with these Rwandan rebels, drawing on their latter's superior training and discipline to try to repulse soldiers of the Ugandan, Rwandan, and Burundian government armies.
Since the Global and All Inclusive Accords ending the 1998-2003 war, the Congolese government has been nominally committed to disbanding Rwandan rebel groups and facilitating their return to Rwanda.
Despite this engagement there have been frequent reports of continued Congolese government assistance to the FDLR in the form of weapons, military support, and collaboration.
In late 2006, Congolese forces requested and received the assistance of FDLR troops in their battles against renegade general Laurent Nkunda's forces near Tongo in Rutshuru.
In an interview with Human Rights Watch, one FDLR combatant who fought wiht them and later fled, estimated that about 80 FDLR combatants supported the Congolese army attacks.
In early 2007, representatives of the national government renewed assurances that the Congolese army would help eliminate FDLR groups, but as ethnic tensions rose, Congolese soldiers once again refrained from attacking the FDLR.
In August, the government was again accused by Rwandan military of providing arms to the FDLR and, on October 2, the BBC reported that one of its journalists had found evidence of continued military co-operation between the Congolese army and the FDLR.
Meanwhile, attempts to integrate Nkunda's forces into the national army failed miserably. In early 2006 and again in August and November 2006, Nkunda's troops fought against soldiers of the national army, making plain their continued autonomy and refusal to enter the integrated force under the brassage arrangement.
In an effort to avoid further military confrontation, Congolese army soldiers and Nkunda reached a compromise at the end of December 2006 involving a form of limited integration called mixage.
This compromise collapsed by mid-2007, leaving Nkunda in a far stronger position militarily and politically than he had been at the end of 2006. The failure of the attempt at a political solution also undermined the efforts of national authorities to reassert administrative control in the region, and increased ethnic tensions.
After military operations in November 2006 produced substantial losses for both sides and no clear winner, Gen John Numbi, then head of the Congolese airforce, arrived in Goma and began talks with Nkunda.
The discussions were moved to the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on December 31 where they were facilitated by high-ranking Rwandan military officers, including Chief of Staff Gen James Kabarebe.
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Nkunda and Numbi reached agreement in the first days of January 2007, but the terms of the accord were not put in writing or made public.
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