A May 8 communiqué of the extra-ordinary Organ Troika Summit, plus the Southern Africa Development Community Troika and Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) troop-contributing countries in Windhoek, Namibia, indicated that the Summit reiterated SADC’s support in fighting armed groups in eastern DR Congo.
The Summit approved the deployment of a SADC force within the framework of the southern African bloc’s Standby Force as a regional response in support of the Congolese government to restore peace and security in eastern DR Congo.
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A day later, during a visit to Botswana on Tuesday, May 9, Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi cast a shadow over the mandate of the East African Community regional force (EACRF) deployed to his country’s conflict-ridden eastern region in November 2022.
He threatened to kick out the EAC troops from Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, and South Sudan, by June, if they did not battle the M23 rebels, one among the more than 130 local and foreign armed groups blamed for the endless insecurity in his country’s east.
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Though Kinshasa calls them terrorists, in a bid to foil all regional efforts at engaging them in political dialogue, the M23 are Congolese rebels fighting for the rights of their persecuted community in eastern DR Congo.
In April, the EACRF force commander, Maj Gen Jeff Nyagah, a Kenyan, resigned and returned home citing a threat to his personal security and "a systematic plan to frustrate” the regional force. Nyagah, in November 2022, said that a military solution would be the last option.
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If the SADC deployment is realised, analysts say, it will join a mélange of foreign forces including the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in DR Congo (MONUSCO) and its Forces Intervention Brigade (FIB), EACRF, in addition to thousands of Burundian and Ugandan troops deployed in the restive east of the vast country under separate bilateral arrangements to fight armed groups there.
Eastern DR Congo will, indeed, be a powder keg of sorts.
The status of force agreement (SOFA) pact between Kinshasa and the EAC Secretariat, initially gave EACRF a mandate of six months. Kinshasa has extended it to June, on condition that the EAC armies must battle the M23.
Uganda’s contingent of about 900 soldiers under EACRF is deployed in areas such as Bunagana, Kiwanja, and Rutchuru.
Kenya’s contingent of about 900 soldiers is in Kibumba in Nyiragongo territory and Rumangabo in Rutchuru territory.
The more than 400 troops from South Sudan are in Rumangabo area in Rutchuru territory while the Burundians, estimated to be more than 500, are in areas such as Saké, Mushaki, Kitchanga, Kilorirwe and Mweso in Masisi territory. All EACRF forces are deployed in North Kivu province.
Operation Shujaa
Earlier, in November 2021, Uganda and DR Congo signed a Memorandum of Understanding to conduct a joint military operation code-named "Operation Shujaa” against the ADF in Eastern DR Congo following escalated attacks by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels in both countries.
In April 2022, President Yoweri Museveni revealed that 4,000 Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) troops were involved in the joint UPDF-FARDC Operation Shujaa tracking ADF in Beni territory in North Kivu province and Irumu territory in Ituri province.
Burundi’s ‘secret’ arrangement
Just like Uganda, in 2021, Burundi also ‘secretly’ sent troops, believed to be more than 1,000, into DR Congo’s South Kivu province to fight the RED-Tabara and FNL rebels in Uvira and Fizi territories.
Biggest UN Mission
The latest UN Mission, MONUSCO, which took over from an earlier UN operation – the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) – on July 1, 2010, is the biggest, and oldest, foreign troops deployment in the country.
It comprises militaries from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, South Africa, Indonesia, Morocco, Tanzania, Uruguay, and Malawi, among others. Its top 10 police contributors are Senegal, Egypt, Bangladesh, India, Burkina Faso, Togo, Canada, Guinea, and Mali, respectively.
The new UN Mission is authorized to use all necessary means to carry out its mandate relating, among others, to the protection of civilians, humanitarian personnel, and human rights defenders under imminent threat of physical violence and to support the Congolese government in its stabilization and peace consolidation efforts.
As of February 2023, its total deployed personnel in DR Congo is 17,753. This includes 12, 379 troops and 1,597 police officers. They also have 2,970 civilian officers and 169 experts on mission, among others.
Its contingents are deployed everywhere in North Kivu, Ituri, and South Kivu provinces.
FIB
Authorized by the UN Security Council on March 28, 2013, initially, Tanzanian, Malawian, and South African troops led the 3,000-strong special UN Force Intervention Brigade (FIB) – the first UN peacekeeping unit mandated to neutralize armed groups that threaten peace in eastern DR Congo – under MONUSCO. Brig Gen James A. Mwakibolwa (Tanzania) served as the FIB&039;s first commander and presided over the operations against M23.
Today, FIB also has troops from Kenya and Nepal.
They were added in 2021.
FIB troops mainly operate in parts of North Kivu and Ituri provinces.
Mercenaries from Eastern Europe in the mix
Besides the EAC forces, MONUSCO, and others, there is also a dangerous element of more than 300 mercenaries from Eastern Europe – not the Russian Wagner group as earlier alleged – brought in by Kinshasa to crash the M23 rebellion.
In May 2022, there were reports of sightings of Eastern European men in uniforms with the insignia of the private Bulgarian company Agemira conducting flight demonstrations of Sukhoi fighter jets at the Congolese Air Force airfield in Kinshasa.
Reports also indicated that UN investigators confirmed that Agemira had stationed some 40 engineers and flight technicians including Bulgarians, Georgians, and Belarusians, at the airport in Goma to carry out repairs. Romanian mercenaries reportedly guard the Goma airport while Agemira technicians oversee aircraft maintenance, among others.
In January, Kigali said in a statement, that the recruitment of foreign mercenaries by the DR Congo was a clear indication that Kinshasa was "preparing for war, and not peace.”
Foreign armed groups
In April 2022, Congolese armed groups that participated in the first phase of dialogues in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, aimed at finding lasting solutions to the insecurity in their country’s east pinpointed the presence and operations of foreign militia forces as a threat to peace in the region.
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They were referring to, among others, the FDLR-FOCA, an UN-sanctioned genocidal group based in eastern DR Congo for close to three decades. It was formed by the masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi and it is, together with its splinter groups including CNRD/FLN and RUD-Urunana, at the heart of the insecurity affecting eastern DR Congo and the region.
The Rwandan genocidal militia, now reportedly openly incorporated into the Congolese national army, have bases in North Kivu and South Kivu.
Then there is ADF, or Madina at Tauheed wal Mujahedeen (MTM) militia group, a group of Ugandan origin that is equally destructive.
Burundi’s RED-Tabara militia set up a rear base in eastern DR Congo in 2015.
Will foreign forces address underlying causes of violence in eastern DR Congo?
Kinshasa and its allies constantly accuse Rwanda of being the cause of insecurity in eastern DR Congo yet the endemic security challenges in the region made up of 11 vast provinces – Haut Uele, Ituri, North Kivu, South Kivu, Maniema, Tanganyika, Haut Lomami, Haut Katanga, Tshopo, Lomami, and Lualaba – are mainly internally manufactured.
For long, Congolese leaders have used a narrative that scapegoats Rwanda for their failures to offer their citizens a safe and dignified life.
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The problems of DR Congo, by and large, are internal political disorganization, greed, indiscipline on the side of the national army, and fragmentation of armed groups with competing interests, as already detailed in the recent UN Group of Experts report.
Top UN officials know, for example, about the threat posed to the entire region by the genocidal ideology that Kinshasa has allowed to sprout in eastern DR Congo but nothing is ever done to stop it.
After masterminding the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, in July 1994, the genocidal regime’s army (ex-FAR), politicians as well as Interahamwe militia orchestrated the Genocide – fled with their weapons to eastern DR Congo, then known as Zaire, with the same ideology of exterminating the Tutsi. For nearly three decades, the Congolese Tutsi population in the region continues to take the brunt of the militia’s crimes.
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In November 2022, following her official visit to the DR Congo, the UN special adviser on the prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, was deeply alarmed about the escalation of violence in the Great Lakes Region where a genocide - the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda – happened.
"The current violence is a warning sign of societal fragility and proof of the enduring presence of the conditions that allowed large-scale hatred and violence to erupt into a genocide in the past,” she said.
And she explained the issue, properly, noting that the current violence mainly stems from the refugee crisis that resulted as many individuals involved in the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda fled to eastern DR Congo, forming armed groups such as the FDLR which is still active.
In response to the presence of this armed group, new armed groups were formed and the failure to bring non-state armed actors to book is the consequence we now see, she added. The UN special adviser noted that finding a solution to the ongoing conflict in eastern DR Congo would require addressing the underlying causes of the violence and learning lessons from the past.
The abuses currently occurring in eastern DR Congo, she noted, including the targeting of civilians based on their ethnicity or perceived affiliation to the warring parties must be halted.
"Our collective commitment not to forget past atrocities constitutes an obligation to prevent re-occurrence,” Nderitu stressed.
According to the UN, more than 130 armed groups operate in the eastern DR Congo, including the genocidal and militia, FDLR. The M23, which Kigali is accused of supporting, and which Kinshasa wants SADC forces and others to fight, operates only in one province, North Kivu.
As Nderitu stressed, finding a solution to the ongoing conflict in eastern DR Congo would require addressing the underlying causes of the violence and learning lessons from the past, not turning eastern DR Congo into a powder keg. By and large, the biggest barrier to peace is Kinshasa’s refusal to implement the existing peace roadmaps. The latter include the Luanda roadmap and the Nairobi Process that demands that Kinshasa disarms all armed groups and engage in dialogue toward a sustainable solution.