[allAfrica.com] [celtel.com] Is Kabila Stoking East Congo Fires? The Monitor (Kampala) COLUMN June 25, 2004 Posted to the web June 24, 2004 By Ngango Rukara Kampala On May 28, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Foreign Affairs Minister Antoine Gonda told a news conference in Kigali that he had come to convey his President's message to President Paul Kagame, that the government in Kinshasa was satisfied that Rwanda had nothing to do the with fighting between the DRC forces and units of their own army in Bukavu, South Kivu. A few days before, the United Nations Director for peace-keeping, Jean Marie Guehenno had declared in Kigali that the principal threat to security and the perennial source of conflict in the Great Lakes Region was the operations of the Interahamwe militia in the DRC. Guehenno vowed that the United Nations was going to do whatever it took to disable the Rwandan militia. Indeed, the official knew what he was talking about, as the Interahamwe militia continue to wreck havoc in the region. On July 30, 2002 an agreement was signed between the governments of Rwanda and DRC, represented by their respective Presidents in Pretoria, South Africa. This was after a long-drawn out war involving a number of African countries and an assortment of regional militia outfits, prominent among them the Rwandan Ex-FAR and Interahamwe who fought alongside President Kabila's soldiers. The agreement required that Rwanda withdraw her troops from the territory of the Congo, while Kabila committed himself to disarming and repatriating the Rwandan militia. By the end of October 2002, not a single Rwandan soldier remained on the Congolese territory. The Rwandan government has lived by its side of the deal. Today, Kabila has not honoured a single clause of that agreement. On April 8 this year, Interahamwe militia launched an incursion into Rwandan territory only to be stopped in their tracks by the Rwandan Defence forces. Clearly, the forces that committed genocide in Rwanda in 1994, and who are still bent on committing yet an other round of genocide, against the Rwandan people, are still hosted by the Kinshasa government against the Pretoria Agreement. Now, in the wake of the disturbances in Bukavu, Kabila jumps at the first opportunity to accuse Rwanda of involvement in the capture of Bukavu town by DRC army dissidents. For the last two years, a mechanism to verify such allegations has been in place in the DRC conflict, largely involving United Nations as well as South African observers. As conflict in South Kivu flared, these "neutral" forces were on the ground. As a matter of fact, United Nations (Monuc) helicopters patrolled the border stretch to verify whether any Rwandan government forces crossed into the DRC territory. The Monuc exercise came up with no trace of evidence implicating Rwanda. Indeed, President Joachim Chissano of Mozambique, the current Chairman of the African Union, dismissed the DRC President's accusations against Rwanda as unfounded. While the region has been largely sympathetic with the DRC, owing to the volatile situation that has characterised that country over the years, Kabila has been sleep-walking around a potentially explosive environment. What is happening in Bukavu is not unique. Only two months ago, Kinshasa was rocked by gun-fire and heavy weapons explosions, from the city's main military garrison, for over ten hours and the story was that a coup d'état had been attempted. Dozens of people were killed and many more wounded. Early morning on June 11, troops led by Kabila's own chief body guard, a major in the presidential guard, seized the National Radio and Television to announce a coup overthrowing the regime in Kinshasa. Though the coup plotters did not succeed in both cases, there was considerable loss of life and the fundamental problem of leadership still remains. Clearly, the events in the DRC point to a dangerously fragile internal political situation, which lies squarely on the leadership in Kinshasa. It is time for Kabila to wake up and smell the coffee. The Congolese President has his reasons for drawing Rwanda into the mess in his own country. He has calculated that by drawing Rwanda into the Congo quagmire he will successfully divert attention from his own involvement with Interahamwe militia. Most importantly, though, like other client regimes before, President Kabila has gambled on the possibility of certain European countries intervening to prop him up - as his regime faces possible demise under internal threat - for the sake of their own interests in the region. And the Congolese President's gamble seems to be paying off. While the European Union envoys in Kinshasa have not condemned recent Interahamwe attacks and killing of South African peacekeepers in North Kivu, indeed while they have never denounced the hate propaganda similar to RTLM's that was broadcast on FM Radio stations in Bukavu shortly before the recent clashes in South Kivu, pitting DRC government troops against some of their own units, the EU ambassadors in Kinshasa have chosen to play along with Kabila's machinations. Reports that the European envoys in DRC have released a statement calling upon the government of Rwanda to condemn the Congolese troops who captured part of their own territory reveal sinister motives. While the United Nations, as underscored by Guehenno's statement in Kigali, believes that the activities of Interahamwe militia, have been at the very core of the conflicts in the region, the ambassadors have never found it relevant to appeal to Kabila to deal with the them in accordance with the Pretoria and Lusaka Agreements. By asking Rwanda to pronounce itself on the Bukavu clashes, certain European envoys in Kinshasa sought to insinuate that somehow the government of Rwanda was involved in the events that led to the fall of Bukavu. However, the European position on the issue was far from unanimous, as we see Mr Louis Michel, the Belgian Foreign Minister's statement that the European Union was sending a peace-keeping force led by the French to Eastern DRC. The statement was quickly shot down. The rejection by the European Union to deploy troops in eastern DRC does not necessarily spell the end of the ambitions of those in Europe still bent on steering events in the region in their own direction. It should be recalled that by June 1994 when the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorising France to send troops to Rwanda in what later come to be infamously known as the Zone Turquoise, French troops had already been deployed in Goma, eastern DRC and parts of north western Rwanda. They did not have to wait, they play by their own rules especially where Africa is concerned. Subsequently, the French troops made a mockery of the whole mission by successfully rescuing the planners and principal architects of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and giving them safe passage into the DRC. To the French though, it is business as usual. For the last ten years, they have always sought the slightest excuse to send troops to areas where Interahamwe militia and their leaders still have bases. In the meantime, President Kabila has adopted a bellicose posture and rhetoric, threatening to mobilise "all available resources" at his disposal for war efforts, targeting Rwanda. The region has been down this path before and certainly nobody, apart from Kabila and the French, would want to retrace those steps. African efforts to resolve the DRC conflict have so far produced plausible results, with hope for ultimate stability for the entire region. A national government, bringing together previously warring factions in the country, fledgling as it is, has been formed and the world was beginning to breathe a sigh of relief. By consorting with the French, inviting them to deploy troops in eastern DRC and still maintaining his cozy liaison with Interahamwe militia and the Ex-FAR, Kabila is not serving the cause of peace in the Great Lakes Region. Kabila is consciously creating a situation in the region, which offers the very forces motivated by the desire to destabilise the region, the opportunity to pick up where they left in 1994, the rendezvous sadly once again being the Kivus and the target being Rwanda. Time for the international community to avert disaster. Mr Rukara is the Director of the Great Lakes Centre in Kigali.   =============================================================================   Copyright © 2004 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). =============================================================================