Are Rwanda and DRC setting the stage for war?

Apparently, Monuc soldiers working around Goma have recently been receiving leaflets warning them that Nkunda has the capability of shooting down armoured helicopters.

Although Monuc has not spoken about it openly, sources said the matter had caused much consternation and the leader of the UN forces, Alan Doss, recently visited New York to make the case for superior equipment for his troops.

Whichever way one looks at it, Nkunda’s new successes have put him in a situation where he is now able to receive military support from third parties and disguise it as equipment he captured from raids on DRC battalions.

In an interview with The EastAfrican, Francois Grignon, Africa programme director of the International Crisis Group, who has been following the DRC conflict for years, dismissed the fears expressed by Kigali, arguing that Rwanda is not under any threat and that the alliance between the DRC forces and the Rwanda rebels is a marriage of convenience to deal with Nkunda.

“This is an internal DRC issue; I don’t see how Rwanda should come in. It is better for Rwanda to work together with DRC government to bring about lasting peace in the region,” he said.

Still, observers argue that while Nkunda is capable of maintaining the region he controls, he neither has the will nor the military capability to overturn the government in Kinshasa, as he recently bragged.

At best, he is seen as a nuisance, despite claiming that his forces are protecting the province’s ethnic Tutsi population from attacks by the Rwandan insurgent armed group, the FDLR.
His advantage, though, is that his forces are familiar with the terrain and have emerged victorious whenever attacked by Kinshasa.

Yet, unlike 1999, there has been no cause for rebellion and Nkunda has had a hard time convincing the world that he is actually protecting the Tutsi population in Congo. Experts on Congo like Mr Grignon believe that the regulation of mining in South and North Kivu provinces will be key to stabilising the country.

Rebel groups in the DRC have been using the minerals to finance their war activities. Unlike other areas in the Congo where multinational companies are involved, the mining in South and Eastern Kivu is controlled by small operators, who in some cases sell their products to multinational companies.

It is still a matter of conjecture whether the multinational companies are directly financing the rebellion in eastern Congo in order to have unfettered access to the mineral resources.

However, the success of Congo’s reconstruction hinges on Kivu province, where the root causes of the conflict — including unequal access to land and unfair sharing of revenues from natural resource exploitation — persist.

There was cautious optimism for peace in North Kivu after the “Goma agreement” was signed on January 23.

The agreement followed negotiations between the government, Nkunda and Mai Mai militias, and included a ceasefire, the withdrawal of troops from key areas and the creation of a UN “buffer zone.”

Under the agreement, militias will be given amnesty for insurgency or acts of war, but not for war crimes or crimes against humanity.

However, the Rwandan Hutu FDLR was not invited to the talks and, in March, the Kinshasa government threatened to forcibly disarm the rebels.