Last week, when Uganda handed back some 600 Congolese soldiers to the Democratic Republic of Congo, none of the DRC’s high powered delegation of ambassadors, senior army officers and foreign affairs officials on hand to receive them would make any comment on the conflict in the east of the country to the team of Ugandan and foreign reporters present.

It was a telling silence; since it began, Kinshasa has seemed confused about how to tackle the latest uprising in DR Congo’s perpetually troubled eastern provinces.

The soldiers had fled to Uganda a week earlier after losing Bunagana border town with Uganda and Rwanda to rebels of the newly created M23 outfit, which mostly comprises former members of the Laurent Nkunda-led National Congress for the Defence of the People, CNDP.
In spite of earlier threats that they would march on Goma, the biggest town in the east, and Kinshasa, DRC’s capital, should Congolese ethnic Tutsi continue being targeted, Lt Col. Vianney Kazarama, the spokesperson of M23, told The EastAfrican.

“We don’t want to take over or bring down President Joseph Kabila’s government, because that is not the main issue. We want the Congolese government to fulfil the promises they made in the March 23, 2009 agreement.”

(Read: ‘We will take Goma if killings continue', says M23)
According to Lt Col. Kazarama, the Kabila government has reneged on fully integrating CNDP in Congolese politics; recognising its members’ military ranks; releasing its political prisoners; returning refugees; and ensuring equitable governance, among 15 issues, he says, M23 holds against Kinshasa.

“We are willing to sit down and discuss with the Congo government and settle everything; reconciliation, development and democracy,”
Lt Col. Kazarama told The EastAfrican, a day after his group unveiled its political wing, co-ordinated by Jean Marie Runiga, a bishop of several Anglican churches in DR Congo.

Repeated efforts by The EastAfrican and other news agencies to secure a comment from the Congolese embassy in Kampala proved futile. Top officials have reportedly been in endless meetings whose agenda they, or their secretaries, were reluctant to reveal.

Dr Kasaija Phillip Apuuli, a senior lecturer at Makerere University’s Department of Political Science and Public Administration, says this silence is understandable.

“How can they speak before the president speaks?” Dr Kasaija, who has conducted studies on regional politics and security, asked. “The government hasn’t crafted a response vis-à-vis the demands of M23,” he added.
M23’s modus operandi, Dr Kasaija noted, is a reprise of CNDP’s, which too threatened to invade Goma in November 2008 under exactly the same pretext — that Congolese ethnic Tutsi were being targeted for persecution.

That attack never happened. In an ensuing joint operation with the Congolese government, Rwanda arrested its founding leader, Laurent Nkunda, and has held him since without bringing any charges against him.

Recently, President Paul Kagame threatened to release him should the UN and the international community continue blaming his country for the DRC’s woes; he was responding to an interim report by a UN Group of Experts published early this month accusing Kigali of training and arming M23.

(Read: It isn’t Kagame making trouble in Congo, it’s people who fight like him)
The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region last Wednesday convened a Special Session of the Regional Inter-Ministerial Committee, comprising foreign affairs and defence ministers.

The 11-country ICGLR was especially empowered last year by its heads of state to play a lead role in resolving peace-threatening situations in the region whenever they emerge.

The meeting, attended by 13 ministers, focused on the security situation in the eastern DRC and took place on the margins of the African Union Summit of Head of States in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The meeting agreed, among 13 decisions that are subject to review by the heads of state, that the ICGLR Secretariat should work with the AU and the UN to immediately establish “a neutral international force to eradicate M23, FDLR [which Rwanda accuses of the 1994 Genocide] and all other negative forces in eastern DRC and patrol and secure the border zones.”