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Demonstration against the Luanda ceasefire agreement and calling on the international community to call for Rwanda’s withdrawal from North Kivu province on November 24, 2022 in Goma (DRC). ARLETTE BASHIZI / Portal
It is not certain that the main countries in Central and East Africa affected by the conflict in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are speaking with one voice. However, when they met on Wednesday, November 23, in Luanda, Angola, they announced a “cessation of attacks and the withdrawal of the Congolese towns held by the [groupe armé rebelle] M23” supported by Rwanda. A cessation of fighting – scheduled for Friday at 6pm – would loosen the grip threatening to smother the large city of Goma. It still has to be implemented.
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The regional mini-summit in Luanda was organized at the invitation of Angolan President Joao Lourenço, who has been entrusted by the African Union with the role of mediator between the Congolese and Rwandan neighbors, with the support of Burundian Head of State Evariste Ndayishimiye, current President of the East African Community ( EAC) and former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.
Paul Kagame, who had headed Rwanda for three decades, had not made the journey. His relations with his Congolese counterpart Felix Tshisekedi have deteriorated significantly in recent months, leading to the Rwandan ambassador’s expulsion from Kinshasa at the end of October. It was his foreign minister, Vincent Biruta, who backed a text that never explicitly mentions Rwanda’s responsibility for the recent destabilization of eastern Congo, brought to light by a report by the United Nations Expert Group in July.
Kigali denies
However, the final communiqué is actually about Rwanda when the signatories call for the “cessation of all political and military support for the M23”. It is also Kigali that is implicitly singled out when signers worry about “the M23’s acquisition of increasingly sophisticated weapons and other means of conducting attacks against the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC)”.
Rwanda is an implicit target of the ceasefire agreement, which calls for the “cessation of all support” for the M23 group
Rwanda continues to deny any connection to this rebel group, which “was formed in 2012 by deserters from the Congolese army, who were themselves former rebels from an armed group called the National Congress for the Defense of the People, also backed by Rwanda,” recalls Thomas Fessy, researcher specializing in the Democratic Republic of the Congo within the human rights group Human Rights Watch.
Also read: In the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the advance of the M23 rebels triggers panic
Rwanda’s denials struggle to convince, including its most staunch allies. On Wednesday, the State Department’s African Affairs Office in Washington welcomed “the efforts of Angola and the leaders of the Great Lakes to end the violence and suffering in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.” It is made clearer than before that “this is possible (…) if Rwanda ends its support for the M23”. “And, the statement said, if all parties reject hate speech and respect commitments to peace and reconciliation. That last point is aimed at Congolese officials blowing on the community embers. The M23 therefore denounces the Congolese anti-Tutsi campaigns in the east of the country and calls for dialogue to ease tensions.
“The M23 Advances”
So far, Congolese officials have only agreed to discuss with some of the armed groups (there are about a hundred of them) in eastern DRC, refusing to sit down at the table with the M23, which Kinshasa has dubbed “terrorists”. This harbors the risk that disarming and billeting these rebels and their “retreat to [leurs] starting positions. “What positions are we talking about? Is it a buffer zone? Managed by whom? Under Congolese sovereignty? asks Juvenal Munubo Mubi, MP from Walikale, a town in North Kivu, the epicenter of the crisis. The text states that if the “M23 refuses to withdraw and liberate all areas it currently occupies,” EAC leaders will order the regional force to use force to induce submission.
Also read: In the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Goma holds its breath in the face of the M23 rebels
The ceasefire is due to come into force on Friday evening. The deployment of several thousand members of the Regional Force with contingents from Kenya, South Sudan, Burundi and Uganda, which was decided at a regional summit in Nairobi last spring, has only just begun. As for the FARDC, since the rebel offensive resumed in October, they have continued to retreat, sometimes in disarray. On Thursday evening, Lawrence Kanyuka, a political spokesman for the rebellion, said he “read the document [de Luanda] on social media”. “But it’s not really about us,” he added.
The M23 threatens Goma from the north and has opened a new front west of the city at Masisi. “The M23 is advancing and consolidating their positions,” observes Thomas Fessy, who has returned from the region. It can advance further and cut off the road to Sake, which would choke Goma,” specifies the researcher, who also worries about the fate of civilians in the rebel-held zones.
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