M23 have conducted a number of protests against U.N. Security Council Resolution 2098, which enables an offensive combat force in the eastern DRC. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo , Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

When M23 rebels tried twice to arrange a protest march against a United Nations resolution to deploy an intervention brigade with an offensive mandate to eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, they had to postpone it because the local population would not participate.

In Kibumba, 25 kilometres north of the provincial capital Goma, not only had the population refused to demonstrate – they had also fled town.

The rebels rescheduled the Apr. 10 march for Apr. 15. But when that day rolled around, the local residents, and especially the young people, had not returned – and once again the protest had to be postponed.

But according to Janvier Nkinamubanzi, a political analyst at the University of Goma, it was absurd for the M23 to expect the local population to march against the U.N. force. The M23 are named after a peace agreement in Mar. 23, 2009 between leaders of the former rebel group, the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDCP), and the Congolese government. The M23 is a breakaway from the CNDCP, and its members are mostly from the Congolese Tutsi community.

”The inhabitants of Kibumba or regions occupied by M23, even those in Goma, have the impression of being victims of a foreign occupation,” Nkinamubanzi told IPS. The U.N. has said that both Rwanda and Uganda supported M23 rebels in their capture of Goma in December 2012. But after a weeklong occupation of the town, M23 withdrew.

According to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, since the beginning of the M23 rebellion in April 2012, more than half a million people have been driven from their homes in North Kivu province in eastern DRC.

”Asking them to protest against a brigade that comes to liberate them from this situation is a double humiliation, as the national army is unable to protect them,” he added.

M23 have conducted a number of protests against U.N. Security Council Resolution 2098, which enables an offensive combat force in the eastern DRC. This includes forced protest marches, rallies, and a five-day blockade of 11 vehicles belonging to the U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) in Rutshuru, north of Goma.

“Our men will not hesitate to retaliate if they are shot at. The blockade of U.N. vehicles is a strong message of how serious we are,” Lieutenant-Colonel Vianney Kazarama, the military spokesperson for M23, told IPS.

Congolese Foreign Affairs Minister Raymond Tshibanda told a press conference on Apr. 1 that the only future for M23 was to disband as an armed movement. If it failed to do so, the intervention brigade would step in and destroy it, he said.

“The government pretends to speak to M23 while in reality it wants to crush the rebels at the earliest opportunity,” Godefroid Kä Mana, the chair of the cross-cultural Pole Institute, told IPS. The institute works across the Great Lakes region.

While M23 were protesting against the U.N. resolution, local leaders, including village chiefs in Masisi, east of Goma, were calling for the Congolese government to integrate soldiers from the Alliance of Patriots for a Free and Sovereign Congo (APCLS) into the Congolese armed forces.

Bahati Kahembe, one of the four traditional leaders in the North Kivu provincial assembly, recognised that both the rebels and army were responsible for human rights violations in the east of the country. However, he told IPS “the APCLS is less violent towards the population than other forces.”

The APCLS is one of the most organised armed groups in the region. Self-proclaimed “General” Janvier Karairi created it in protest against the Mar. 23, 2009 agreement.

According to MONUSCO, there are between 500 and 1,000 APCLS combatants, who mostly belong to the Hunde ethnic group. They specifically target Tutsis, sometimes in collaboration with Rwandese Hutus from the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, who have been refugees in eastern DRC since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

The APCLS combatants have also provided support to the Congolese armed forces against the CNDP, and now against the M23, which broke away from the latter party. “We are only defending our land against the invaders,” Karairi told IPS.

But the governor of North Kivu, Julien Paluku, retorted: “There are no good or bad rebels.”

Government police arrive on a boat at Goma's port as U.N. peacekeepers watch on in December 2012 after the M23 withdrew from the town in eastern DRC. The U.N. has changed its mandate from a peacekeeping force to an intervention one starting early May. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Stanley Karombo
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 24 2013 (IPS)

As the first of South Africa’s troops are expected to begin arriving in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of the United Nations intervention force at the end of April, governance experts have welcomed the world body’s new mandate in the Central African nation.

According to Dr. Ola Bello, the head of the Governance of Africa’s Resources Programme at the South African Institute of International Relations (SAIIA), the bolstering of U.N. forces in the DRC is long overdue.

On Mar. 28, the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) resolved to move its presence in the DRC from a stabilisation and peace-keeping force to an intervention one.

“The core U.N. force has been too force-shy, as evident in the rebel takeover of Goma in late 2012,” Bello told IPS. The M23 rebels seized Goma in December 2012, but withdrew after a weeklong occupation of the town.

According to the U.N., more than 500,000 people have been driven from their homes in North Kivu, a province in eastern DRC, because of the rebel conflict.

U.N. Organization Stabilization Mission in the DRC (MONUSCO) spokesperson Madnodje Mounoubai announced on local radio station Radio Okapi, which is backed by the U.N., that the resolution gave the 3,069-strong brigade the mandate to neutralise about 40 armed groups operating in the country. This would be done “with or without the Congolese army” with effect from early May, he said.

The neighbouring countries of Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa will be contributing troops to the force.

However, Omar Kavota, the deputy chair of the North Kivu civil society platform, told IPS that they condemned the transportation of South African arms through Uganda. Experts from the U.N. have accused Uganda and Rwanda of supporting the M23 rebels.

According to Radio Okapi, the consignment from the Bloemfontein military base in South Africa was transported to Uganda and then the DRC.

Bello said that there were potential pitfalls to South Africa’s inclusion in the combat unit, as they could be perceived as not being neutral.

He added that South Africa was seen as being close to President Joseph Kabila’s government, “which could be interpreted as being anti-Rwanda and anti-Uganda.

“Confronting the M23 also carries some inherent risk since the rebel movement purports to (and in reality, does to some extent) represent the interest of ethnic Tutsis in eastern DRC.

“South Africa and the other (countries that are) committing these additional combat forces will have to be careful that their actions are not seen as taking sides in what is partly an ongoing internal conflict within the different regional and ethnic groups within the DRC,” Bello said.

However, questions have been raised about the Africa Union’s role in peace-keeping on the continent.

Bello said the AU, through its Peace and Security Council, and Africa Peace and Security Architecture, was in theory charged with the overall maintenance of peace in Africa.

“Performance has, however, been uneven with the modest success in Somalia, for example, (and has been) marred by precipitous failures elsewhere, such as in Darfur, Sudan, as well as with the AU’s marginalisation by Nato in the Libyan conflict.”

In 2003, civil war broke out in Darfur, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians. In 2006, a peace deal was signed between the parties through the assistance of the AU and in conjunction with the U.N. And in 2011, Nato assisted Libya with armed strikes during the uprising against former President Muammar Gaddafi (1969-2011). The AU had instead tried to bring a peaceful end to the rebellion and then later delayed recognising the new Libyan rulers.

Dr. Annie Chikwanha, a senior research fellow at SAIIA, agreed with Bello. She told IPS that the AU’s diplomatic approach may be designed to give member states a chance to resolve their own disputes but “experience in the countries where violent conflicts have erupted have shown that this ‘ideal’ solution does not produce the desired results.

“A more energised, collaborative and quick reaction approach is likely to yield better and more sustainable results in protecting citizens from their leaders,” she added.

Chikwanha said that the limitations placed by Chapter VIII, Article 53 of the U.N. charter, that no enforcement action shall be taken under regional arrangements or by regional agencies without prior authorisation from the UNSC, crippled the AU and made it appear ineffective.

“The AU has thus tended to appear on the scene after much of the killing (has taken place) since its diplomatic appeals would have failed to yield the desired results. Yet it has many other options it can use to prevent such catastrophes,” she said.

A lecturer of political science at the University of Zimbabwe, Professor Eldred Masunungure, echoed her arguments. “Disconnections in the institutional functioning of the different units in the AU system prevent the much-needed collaboration in resolving conflicts in general.

“Reaction time is slowed down by well-known incapacity to mobilise quickly a peace-keeping force to prevent the escalation of the conflicts and minimise civilian casualties,” Masunungure stated in a 2012 journal article, which he co-wrote with Chikwanha, titled “The African Union and Election-Related Conflicts in Africa: An Assessment and Recommendations”.

Chikwanha said that the Peace and Security Directorate within the African Union Commission was directly responsible for attaining the AU’s goal of building peace and security.

* Additional reporting by Taylor Toeka Kakala in Goma, DRC.

General Bosco Ntaganda Ntaganda was not the only M23 combatant who crossed the DRC/Rwandan border. He was followed by soldiers loyal to him, who are also wanted by the DRC government. Credit: William Lloyd-George/IPS

By Taylor Toeka Kakala
GOMA, DR Congo , Mar 22 2013 (IPS)

As the Rwandan government said on Thursday Mar. 21 that it would do all it could to ensure the speedy transfer of war crimes suspect General Bosco Ntaganda to the International Criminal Court, fighters loyal to him are also seeking asylum in the central African nation.

Ntaganda handed himself over to the United States embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, on Mar. 18 and is said to have demanded to be transferred to the ICC, which has accused him of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

It appears that Ntaganda was forced to surrender to the ICC as a result of the fratricidal war within the M23 Congolese rebel group. Ntaganda has been on the ICC’s wanted list since 2006 for crimes committed between 2002 and 2003 in Ituri in eastern DRC.

He was the chief of staff of the former rebel leader Laurent Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), an armed militia group that has since become a political party in DRC.

But Ntaganda was not the only M23 combatant who crossed the DRC/Rwandan border. He was followed by soldiers loyal to him, who are also wanted by the DRC government for their role in a rebellion against the Congolese army. One of them is a 32-year-old soldier from M23, who refers to himself only as Mutunzi. For the past two years, Mutunzi spent most of his days fighting in Masisi district, a mountainous area in North Kivu in eastern DRC.

Despite the fact that Ntaganda was wanted for war crimes, which include recruitment of child soldiers, rape and sexual slavery, Mutunzi told IPS that he still looked up to the general. “Over the past few months, most of the M23 fighters were aware that General Ntaganda was wanted by the ICC for war crimes, but he was still the most respected senior officer,” he said.

Then came the night of Mar. 16, just weeks after the rebel group had split into two factions – those loyal to Ntaganda’s faction, which was led by Jean-Marie Runiga, and the followers of General Sultani Makenga.

Mutunzi said commanding officers ordered the fighters to withdraw after several weeks of heavy fighting.

“The reason was mainly due to the fact that our ammunition had run out,” he told IPS in Kigali, where he has surrendered to Rwandan officials and is currently seeking asylum, along with other combatants from M23.

The M23-Runiga rebels were pushed out from their position to Nkamira camp, a transit site for Congolese refugees in western Rwanda – about 640 soldiers and officers with their top leaders, including Runiga and General Baudouin Ngaruye, Runiga’s chief of staff.

That same day the M23-Makenga faction announced the end of its military campaign.

Meanwhile, Rubens Mikindo, the federal president of Etienne Tshikedi’s Union for Democratic and Social Progress, the largest opposition party in the DRC, told IPS that even though Ntaganda handed himself over to the ICC, he should not expect leniency.

“Bosco Ntaganda served both the Kinshasa and Kigali regimes. Whatever he reveals after he has been handed over to the ICC won’t change anything, as was the case with Thomas Lubanga,” Mikindo said.

The ICC sentenced Lubanga, an ally of Ntaganda, to 14 years in jail last July. He had been transferred to the court in 2006, after being arrested by United Nations peacekeepers in 2005.

Ntaganda fought in the Rwandan genocide that ended in 1994 and later returned to DRC where he led a number of rebellions and at one stage was integrated into the Congolese army.

The Congolese government acknowledged reintegrating Ntaganda into the DRC army. This was done to meet the provisions of the Mar. 23, 2009 peace agreement – where the CNDP signed an agreement with the DRC government to become a political party and have its soldiers integrated into the Congolese army.

Later on, however, Ntaganda was accused of masterminding the M23 rebellion in April 2012, where mostly former CNDP soldiers turned against the government because of the poor conditions in the army. It resulted in the capture of Goma, the capital of North Kivu, in November.

Gaston Musemena, a close colleague of DRC President Joseph Kabila and a member of the National Assembly, concurred: “The DRC worked with Ntaganda in the interests of peace. Once he overstepped his mandate, the head of state’s only option was to cut ties with him.”

“Whatever revelations Ntaganda might make, this country will remain undivided,” he told IPS.

Chrysostome Kwede, a Kisangani lawyer in northeastern DRC, had a different view. “If Ntaganda’s arrest is not a charade, some members in the Congolese government who were involved in his crimes will be very worried. Ntaganda will finger some senior people in Kinshasa and Goma,” he told IPS.

Meanwhile, Goyon Milemba, who chairs a network for the reform of the security sector in North Kivu, told IPS: “The disintegration of M23 has made the possibility of a peace agreement more elusive.”

Godefroid Kä Mana, the co-author of a Jan. 15 open letter to the U.N. Secretary General by 20 eminent persons calling for a firm attitude towards the M23, challenged the one-sided version of events in eastern DRC. Kä Mana believes that “the focus on only one rebellion obscures the role of other militia.”

“Kinshasa’s responsibility in the spread of arms in Kivu is common knowledge. An armed group can be a ‘negative force’ by day, but ‘a positive force’ by night in support of the government,” Kä Mana, who is also the chair of the Pole Institute, an intercultural centre in the Great Lakes region, told IPS.

“With good governance, the war will end because there will be no fuel to justify the rebellions,” Kä Mana said.

*Additional reporting by Aimable Twahirwa in Kigali.