InsiderBLM Africa
Despite a flurry of diplomatic efforts, there seems little chance that a new insurgency in eastern DR Congo will end any time soon. This is because of another failed ceasefire, a UN call for talks that no one seems to want, and a new influx of foreign soldiers.
Both international mediators and the DRC government have stated that they want to give peace efforts a chance to succeed in putting an end to the M23 rebels’ insurgency in the province of North Kivu.
Kinshasa and a number of Western governments assert that Rwanda is supporting the rebels as it looks across the border at the natural resources. Kigali vehemently refutes this assertion.
There has long been tension between the two neighbors. The Tutsi-affiliated M23 claims that one of its goals in the conflict is to defend Tutsis from rival Hutu extremist groups.
Additionally, M23 asserts that the DR Congo government has broken a promise to include the fighters in the army.
After a three-day visit to the region, the UN ambassadors for France and Gabon stressed a political solution to the fighting, which has caused over 800,000 people to flee, according to UN estimates.
However, the DR Congo government forbids talks with the M23 and urges the international community to impose sanctions against Rwanda.
“Let’s not play around! A terrorist organization is the M23 “Christophe Lutundula, the foreign minister, stated late on Monday.
Talking won’t solve anything, according to Mamy Asumini Kayumba, a resident of Goma, a city of more than a million people that is being put in danger by the M23 fighters’ advance.
In 2012, the M23 briefly took control of Goma before being driven out by a joint Congolese-UN offensive.
We have tolerated these atrocities for thirty years; it’s time for it to stop, said Kayumba.
The UN Security Council “should instead go tell the Rwandan government to withdraw its soldiers, who are killing Congolese and shelling cities,” according to Placide Nzilamba, a civil society activist in Goma.
However, “DR Congo is in a difficult military position” due to insurgents who are making progress and do not see a benefit in accepting a ceasefire, according to Reagan Miviri, a researcher at the Ebuteli think tank in Kinshasa.
The fact that President Felix Tshisekedi is anticipated to run for re-election in December makes it “very difficult to offer anything at all to M23 in an election year,” according to Miviri.
Giving M23 fighters government jobs “would be unpopular,” he continued, and it appears that officials have rejected allowing them to join the army.
Doctors without Borders (MSF) made a plea for better aid coordination to assist people in remote areas as yet another indication of the hardships facing civilians.
The majority of aid, according to Caroline Seguin, MSF’s emergency coordinator for North Kivu, is concentrated in Goma, while more than 150,000 displaced people in Lubero territory to the north of the city are experiencing “absolute hardship” and have been left on their own.
The weekend decision by Angola, which assisted in mediating the most recent cease-fire that broke down last week, to send a military unit to North Kivu added to tensions.
The announcement brought back memories of the Second Congo War, which took place in 1998–2002 and involved nine different African nations and almost tore the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa asunder.
To oversee a potential M23 fighter retreat, the East African Community has already sent out a regional force made up of Kenyan and Burundian soldiers.
Kinshasa desires that the force’s “offensive” mandate be to repel M23 fighters.
However, local resentment of the force is growing, similar to the frustration felt toward a UN force that has been in the country for the past 23 years and has been unable to stop the fighting.
Lutundula, the foreign minister of the DRC, said that the Angolan soldiers were not there to attack, but to check out what was going on.
“There is no ambiguity; Angola falls within its purview,” he said.
