Can the Rwanda-DRC deal bring peace to North Kivu?

Congolese government soldiers sit at the frontline near Kibati, north of Goma in eastern Congo. Plans to integrate Tutsi rebels into Congo’s army faltered before they could begin, underlining the challenges facing efforts to pacify the east despite renewed Congo-Rwanda cooperation. Photo/ REUTERS

The swift success of the joint military operation between Rwanda and Congo may have appeared too good to be true. But, just as stunning has been the speed with which peace has returned to one war-weary Great Lakes province.   


Very few people in the Democratic Republic of Congo really trusted the Congolese government when, on January 16, the minister in charge of Internal Affairs, Mr Celestin Mbuyu, announced the end of the bloody ethnic Tutsi rebellion in the North Kivu province, Eastern DRC.


The minister was then chairing an unexpected signing of a unilateral ceasefire by the National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP), the rebellion which routed the Congolese army in August 2008 and threatened to catch the city of Goma, the capital city of the North Kivu province.


Military operations


While the event was in conformity with the Nairobi peace process between Rwanda and DRC which allowed the two countries to decide on December 5, 2008, to undertake a common fight against the Hutu militia of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) living at the border of the two countries, Congolese people were seemingly not prepared to see the Rwandese government commit with the DRC government for joint military operations.


The joint operations, called “Umoja wetu (our unity)” aim at disarming the Hutu militias based in DRC since 1994. As strange and stunning as the deal can appear, the peace climate is becoming a reality on the ground.


Events accelerated very fast from the war situation to peace and people cannot easily understand whether peace has been really restored and how it happened.

People remain traumatised with so many atrocities they were facing, mainly in this Rutshuru district totally occupied by rebel forces since August 2008.


More than 120 people were killed in the city of Kiwanja, 5km north of Rutshuru in November 2008, by the CNDP troops, because of their alleged support for the mai-mai militias.


The UN troops who witnessed the event are accused of having failed to protect these civilians, among them women and young children.


Kiwanja is a popular business city located at the confluence of the roads to Kampala on the east and Butembo in the north at 80 km of Goma, the capital city of the North Kivu province.

It is close to the Virunga National Park which includes the Lake Edward which provides fish to the two provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu.


This means that the perspective of peace in the region paves the way to businessmen to supply the city of Goma and Bukavu with fish and other food products available in this part of the province.


The first evidence that peace is really returning is the fact that the traders are experiencing a new restart of their businesses all over the province.


Faustin Kahongya, a young businessman of the city of Rutshuru, 75 km north from Goma, is very happy because he can restart importing motorcycles from Dubai through Uganda. He reopened his shop in the city of Goma.


“Now I can easily move from the city Bunagana at the border between Uganda and DRC for my business and join Goma without fearing the multiple harassments I was facing during the rebels’ occupation,” he declared.


According to Faustin, the rebels installed a lot of barriers on various points of the main roads during the crisis imposing the businessmen to pay a lot of visibly illegal taxes.

Currently, as his business has restarted, he plans to import more motorcycles from Dubai to be sold in Goma.


Motorcycles are very useful in the city of Goma because they are used as taxis for poor people. The custom offices of the city of Bunagana have just been reopened a week ago.


The city of Goma, about 800,000 people, is generally supplied with day to day food by the two neighbouring districts of Rutshuru in the north and Masisi in the west.

The two districts were totally occupied by the CNDP rebellion and Goma was literally asphyxiated. With the recovering of peace, the various markets started to be supplied again as the situation was before and food prices are reported to go lower and lower.


According to humanitarian organisations, some 300,000 displaced persons out of about a million have left their shakes in the refugee camps and joined their respective homes in the remote villages.


“At the moment, we are identifying the various villages where the displaced persons are going to in order to assist them with food and key equipment because they lost all they could have in terms of commodities and are beginning a new life.


The major part of these persons need to rebuild their houses demolished during the war and to reorganise their farms abandoned for a long time,” Sebas Amani of the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs told reporters.


Displaced persons


More displaced persons are expected to join their former villages as soon as they will be convinced of the end of the war and that they can return home safely.


In the city of Goma, people hope that if the current peace climate improves then the North Kivu province will recover its historical agricultural vocation.


The North Kivu province is considered to be the national attic in the agricultural sector. It generally supplies some other Congolese provinces in market gardening such as beans, potatoes, bananas or fish and beef.

The city of Kinshasa is particularly suffering too much from the lack of such food during this last decade of various crisis in Eastern Congo.


According to the ministry of Agriculture in Kinshasa, the North Kivu province has a capacity of producing sufficient food for the entire country if it entirely recovers peace.


“The region is blessed by God. As a volcanic soil, the region is extremely fertile. The climate is temperate and good for farming,” Norbert Kantintima, the minister of Agriculture declared recently in Goma.

The minister was on his way back from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania where he went to receipt about 200 farm tractors for the improvement of the agriculture in four provinces in Eastern DRC.


Mr Kantintima hopes that very soon, these tractors will replace the armoured vehicles and military tanks in the Eastern DRC landscape.

Encouraging perspectives for local tourism improvement The North Kivu province is also known for its beautiful tourism sites.

The Virunga National Park, formerly, Albert National Park, is in itself a great tourist attraction with its famous mountain gorillas, its lions, elephants and hippopotamuses.

The Virunga National Park constitutes the western point of a tourist circuit beginning form Kenyan and Ugandan national parks.


In 1996, when the war started in South Kivu province, the ministry of Tourism planned to improve the tourism in this area in order to ensure medical healing from the thermal waters available both in Rutshuru and Masisi districts.


Tourists can also being interested in visiting the Ishango grottos supposed to have hosted one of the prehistoric people who invented what is currently considered in the scientific world, as the ancestor of the calculator and the lunar calendar.

The Ishango site, practically unknown, except by museums and the scientific world, is located in northern side of Lake Edward at the estuary of the River Semliki which links Lake Edward with Lake Albert.

The two lakes constitute the DRC sources of the Nile. According to the Belgian archeologist Jean de Heinzelin de Braucourt who discovered the so called “Ishango bone” in early 1950, the historical bone is supposed to have belonged to people who lived in this area at the actual Uganda-DRC border.

The Ishango bone is currently kept in the Museum of Tervuren in Belgium.

In the meantime, the joint military operations between Rwanda and DRC are continuing with apparently notable successes on the ground. As many as 4000 Rwandese troops crossed the Congolese border according to the agreement signed between the two governments on December 5th, 2008.

These operations which should never go further than the end of February aim at hunting the Rwandese Hutu militias based in the two provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu since the Rwandese civil war of 1994.

According to the military sources in DRC, the allied troops Rwanda-DRC are recovering several sites formally occupied by the Hutu militias in the two provinces after heavy fights.

Furthermore some others are asking to be repatriated in Rwanda.  According to UN observers in Goma, North Kivu province and Bukavu, South Kivu province, since the beginning of the joint operations, about 600 militias and their families have been repatriated.

On the military level, the CNDP announced in Goma its decision to transform itself in a political party. The new party will be chaired by Dr Desire Kamanzi, the former spokesperson of the CNDP dissident wing. 

Furthermore, some 350 CNDP rebel troops are reported to have integrated the national army as a first group in January 2009 in Rumangabo camp at 60 km north of Goma. Many others are expected to do so in coming days.

Their former leader, Gen Laurent Nkunda remains under arrest since Jan 22nd, 2009 in Gisenyi, Rwanda and should be extradited very soon in DRC. The mai-mai militias who have been fighting the CNDP troops have joined the national army as well.

Congolese people in the North Kivu province are crossing their fingers hoping that the current peace climate will endure and allow them to restart their usual businesses. They feared to suffer from the presence of the Rwandese troops in their neighborhood.

Fortunately, nothing really bad occurred. On the contrary, they can actually join their farms or travel peacefully from a city to another.

On the national political level, things are not so easy for President Joseph Kabila.

The leaders of the opposition parties are complaining because the decision about the joint military operation between Rwanda and DRC was not debated in the Parliament prior to be implemented as required by the procedures.

According to the MPs, such a decision is too important for the entire nation and it should not be taken by a so reduced number of politicians.

As a matter of fact, less than 5 persons were involved in the decision, namely the Head of the State, Mr. Joseph Kabila, the minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Alexis Tambwe Mwamba, the minister of Internal Affairs Mr.  Celestin Mbuyu and the General Inspector of the National Police, gen John Numbi. 

“Such a decision is a military matter and implied a lot of secrecy and tactfulness”, Joseph Kabila told reporters during a press conference in Kinshasa, on Saturday, January 31st, 2009.

The peace deal between Rwanda and DRC occurred while the Parliament is on leave. Many MPs, opposition and even some from the presidential majority are signing a petition in order to get convocation of an extraordinary session of the Parliament especially devoted to the issue. 

The extraordinary session should also debate on the status of Gen Bosco Ntaganda, the team leader of the CNDP dissident military officers. Gen Ntaganda, known as a ruthless military commander, is accused of massacres in Ituri district, eastern DRC.

He is wanted by the International Criminal Court for conscripting child soldiers and for other war crimes. Currently, Gen Bosco Ntaganda has now become the deputy commander of a joint military offensive by Rwanda and Congo.

For a major part of Congolese MPs, Bosco Ntaganda is a warlord and as such, he should not be trusted to bring stability to the region. The Ntaganda status is obviously embarrassing President Kabila.

He told reporters that the most important thing for him and the country is the peace recovering in the North Kivu province and security at the Rwanda-DRC border.

According to the parliamentary procedures, the number of the required signatures for the convocation of an extraordinary session of the Parliament is 250. Apparently the petitioners have not get the required number.

But in any case, the ordinary session starts early March 2009 and the issue will be discussed.

In the meantime, the government is pursuing diplomatic talks with Rwandan officials.

A special evaluation meeting started on Thursday Feb 5th, 2009 in Gisenyi, Rwanda supervised by the two ministers of Foreign Affairs. Alexis Tambwe Mwamba for DRC and Ms Rose Museminali for Rwanda.

The meeting which includes the military commanders of the two countries and the governors of the neighboring provinces of North Kivu and Gisenyi, aims at assessing the joint military operations.

The Rwandese troops are expected to return home at the end of February.