Lhe leaders of the seven East African Community countries are meeting in Nairobi, Kenya on Monday (June 20) to discuss the security situation in the highly troubled eastern region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). ). This regional summit comes as tensions have redoubled in recent weeks between the DRC and Rwanda with the resurgence of the rebellion of the Movement of March 23 (M23), accused of having killed in January at least 26 Congolese soldiers in an attack. Since then, Kinshasa has accused Kigali of supporting this predominantly Tutsi rebellion, which Kigali denies.
A UN report accuses Rwanda of arming these rebels. After occupying several towns in North Kivu, including the capital Goma for a few days, the M23 was defeated in 2013 by the Congolese army and UN peacekeepers. It is this movement, accusing Kinshasa of not having respected an agreement on the reintegration of its combatants, which reappeared at the end of last year and provoked a new crisis between Rwanda and the DRC, while relations between the two countries had calmed down since Felix Tshisekedi came to power in Kinshasa in January 2019.
Very strong tensions
An additional sign of the current high tensions, a Congolese soldier was killed and two Rwandan policemen and civilians injured on Friday in an exchange of fire in Goma (East) at a border post between the DRC and Rwanda. The people of eastern DRC “have suffered for a long time and continue to pay a very high price in human lives and destruction of property”, the Kenyan presidency said in a statement.
Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta called last week for the deployment of a regional force in eastern DRC to restore peace there. “The East African Regional Force must be deployed immediately in the provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu in order to stabilize the region and restore peace,” he said. saying “worried” by the latest tensions, which risk, according to him, to hinder the process of political dialogue in progress.
One more intervention in a tense geopolitical context
On Sunday, the regional chiefs of staff of the seven EAC countries held a meeting aimed at finalizing preparations for the deployment of this regional force. They must present their conclusions to the heads of state present in Nairobi before the latter meet behind closed doors to discuss them. But the climate is already looking tense. At the end of the week, the Congolese government refused that Rwanda participate in this regional force on its soil. Rwanda is a member of the EAC and the DRC joined the organization in 2022. “Security continues to deteriorate in the East, basically because Rwanda is trying to occupy our country, rich in gold, coltan and cobalt , for his own benefit. It is an economic war for the control of resources, waged by terrorist gangs from Rwanda,” said the Congolese president at the time. Félix Tshisekedi also called on the international community, “especially the United States and the United Kingdom”, to “condemn this invasion” and to put pressure on Rwandan President Paul Kagame to “recall his troops who invaded eastern Congo. An extraordinary “Higher Defense Council” was held in the middle of the week, chaired by the Head of State Félix Tshisekedi, after which the DRC decided to suspend its bilateral agreements with Rwanda.
The role of Rwanda and Uganda pointed out
“Another possibility, and the greatest risk, is that the fighting is a manifestation of regional tensions. After all, we know that the launch of joint operations between the Ugandan and Congolese armies against the ADF [Allied Democratic Forces] in November 2021 angered officials in Kigali,” write the organizations Groupe d’études sur le Congo (Gec) and Ebuteli, linked to New York University. “The most recent row between the two countries dates back to 2019, when Rwanda accused Uganda of harboring dissidents; Kampala alleged that Rwanda was spying on and kidnapping people in his country. There were other disputes, including the construction of a railway and competition over gold exports from eastern Congo. As a result of these disputes, Rwanda closed its critical border crossing with its neighbor in Gatuna”, explain the experts in a recent note entitled: The resurgence of M23: deja vu?.
