Key topics
- Kagame denies Rwanda’s involvement in DRC, despite UN reports confirming troops.
- Regional calls for dialogue and Rwanda’s withdrawal from DRC to prevent escalation.
- Failing peace talks could lead to a “frozen conflict” and new regional war.
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By Justice Malala ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame says he wants peace, but he’s not acting like a leader who wants it.
In an extraordinary display last week, the autocrat favored by western leaders for stabilizing his country and transforming the economy told CNN that he did not know whether members of his army were in war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) or not. This is despite repeated United Nations reports outlining his government’s funding for the M23 rebels — who have in the past month captured three major DRC cities and annexed massive territory — and detailing the presence of 4,000 Rwanda Defence Force (RDF) troops in the region. The week before, Kagame shocked the continent when he taunted South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa with war. “If South Africa prefers confrontation,” he posted on X. “Rwanda will deal with the matter in that context any day.”
Kagame’s belligerence is testing the world’s patience. UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, the Group of Seven, the 16-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc and others have rightly condemned Rwanda for the latest escalation in the 30-year conflict and called on Kagame to withdraw from the DRC. At least 3,000 people have died, reports of large-scale rape abound, while 700,000 have been displaced in the past month. Calls for international sanctions on Rwanda have mounted, with France’s UN ambassador Nicolas de Rivière saying “it was time to call a cat a cat” and make Rwanda account for its actions.
Yet, no matter how complicit in the violence or how detestable Kagame may be to some of the region’s leaders (the DRC’s President Felix Tshisekedi has compared him to Hitler), calling out Western powers to sanction Rwanda may lull the fighting but sanctions along will not bring peace.
Previous attempts at peace collapsed because Rwanda has accused the DRC of sheltering the FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda), an armed group created by remnants of the ethnic Hutu who massacred 800,000 Tutsi during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Rwanda says that this “genocidal militia” and others have continued to visit violence and discrimination on the large number of Congolese Tutsi who live in the east. The rampant M23 rebel group was formed on March 23, 2009 because agreements to address this grievance were not implemented.
Addressing Rwanda’s fears, which it has repeated for 30 years, is central to a solution. The DRC government’s failure in the 2000s, in 2013, in 2019 and in the past year to address these grievances led to more than 80,000 Congolese Tutsi harboring in Uganda and Rwanda while giving M23 — with Rwanda’s backing — an opportunity to regroup.
Securing the safety of the Tutsi in the eastern DRC will defang Rwanda, expose its leaders’ war-mongering ways if they resurface (Kagame has of late started talking about how the Rwanda-DRC border is a colonial construct, hinting at growing expansionist instincts), and ensure that the world does not have a repeat of the 1994 genocide that Kagame allegedly fears.
This is not a popular opinion, but to reject it is to ignore the region’s history and failure to strike a lasting peace over the past three decades. It also explains, without at all condoning, Rwanda’s actions in violating the DRC’s territorial integrity.
“As we are a very small country, our current doctrine is to go and fight the fire at its origin,” Kagame said in a 2022 speech. “We do what we must do, with or without the consent of others.”
Kagame has been accused of abusing this doctrine — a Human Rights Watch report alleged the targeting, kidnapping and killing of his opponents abroad or their relatives at home. Rwanda has repeatedly denied these charges. Rwanda’s abuses, however, do not mean that its insecurity and Tshisekedi’s failure to guarantee peace and stability in the region should be ignored. In any case, a safe and secure DRC is good for that country and all its people.
Is a secure eastern DRC achievable? A path to address these issues is now open. Leaders of two regional blocs — the East African Community and SADC — called for the resumption of “direct negotiations and dialogue with all state and non-state parties” last weekend. Their call for the implementation of a “harmonized plan for the neutralization of FDLR and the lifting of Rwanda’s defensive measures / disengagement of forces from the DRC as agreed in the Luanda process” is the most important of the meeting’s resolutions. Rwanda cannot “disengage” forces that it has not deployed to the area in the first place, meaning that Kagame acknowledges his country’s presence in the eastern DRC. Rwanda must withdraw and the DRC must do what a legitimate government should do — secure its people.
If this initiative fails, however, the most likely outcome is a “frozen conflict.” The last significant pause in the DRC conflict was in 2012-2013 when US President Barack Obama threatened serious consequences against Rwanda while the European Union imposed an aid freeze. Kagame stopped the warring, but DRC again did not fulfill its promise to secure the eastern region and stop Tutsi victimization.
In a global political context, where the idea of a “rules-based international order” is collapsing under the weight of Trumpism and states under attack, such as Ukraine, are no longer guaranteed protections, the eastern DRC could be annexed by M23 and its backer, Rwanda, leading to the emergence of a new administration in the region. In the medium term, we would have a frozen conflict situation — an outcome similar to what’s emerging in Ukraine where Russia may keep parts of the country it has taken illegally in war. In the DRC context, this would see a new regime in a new eastern DRC country with an M23 government becoming a neighbor to Rwanda.
That annexation would set off its own long, brutal, cycle of violence and possibly even trigger a repeat of the multi-nation 1998-2003 war that killed millions and left more than 7 million people displaced. That can be avoided. Leaders need to hold their noses and address the grievances of a man they may not like, a man whose commitment to peace is questionable, but whose central fear is legitimized by a terrible history.
Read also:
- Andrew Kenny: Why Rwanda’s Kagame is the most dangerous man in the world
- Rwanda’s support for M23 escalates DRC conflict
- NSN: Ramaphosa urged to sack defence leaders over South African soldier predicament in DRC
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