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Rwanda Gets 2-Week Window in Congo

The East African (Nairobi)
ANALYSIS
December 6, 2004
Posted to the web December 8, 2004

By Charles Onyango-Obbo
Nairobi
There's no shortage of irony in the UN Security Council's plan to hold an
emergency session to discuss the incursion of Rwandan troops into eastern
Congo.
Those who understand Kigalispeak would have realised that when Rwanda's
Permanent Representative at the UN, Stanislas Kamanzi, appeared before the
Security Council on November 29, what he did was announce that Rwanda had sent
its troops into the DRC.
After listing a series of attacks by ex-FAR (the former Rwandan army) and
Interahamwe forces based in the DRC over the past three months, Kamanzi said
the rebels were set on "finishing" their mission of the genocide. He said, "We
cannot allow it to continue any longer."
Kamanzi's language was noticeably sharper than President Paul Kagame's two days
earlier on his return from the Francophone summit in the Burkina Faso capital,
Ouagadougou.
Now we know that Kagame had written to Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo,
who is the current chairman of the OAU, laying out Rwanda's concerns and
hinting at military action. He had also met DRC President Joseph Kabila in
Ouagadougou, and presented him with three options for dealing with the rebel
threat. Kabila reportedly "rejected" the proposals.
However, by this time, the "two weeks" that Kigali said it wanted to stage a
"limited" raid into the DRC to destroy rebel bases had been widely floated.
Indications are that Kigali then began military action on the evening on
November 29, but had moved troops some days earlier, possibly as early as
November 20, as the declaration on Peace, Security, Democracy and Development
in the Great Lakes Region was being signed in Dar es Salaam.
Rwanda seems to have been wrong-footed by the attempts to accord the ex-FAR/
Interahamwe groups observer status at the Dar es Salaam meeting. That came on
the back of the November 15 attacks in which rebels launched a series of
rockets from the DRC into a Rwandan village.
The rebels had chosen their moment well. The Global Fund meeting was taking
place in Arusha; the UN Security Council was holding a rare meeting outside New
York in Nairobi a few days later; then there was the Great Lakes Summit in Dar;
the East African leaders' summit in Arusha where Rwanda was set to push for
admission as a full member of the EAC; and then the international conference on
landmines in Nairobi.
With international attention focused on the region, the gamble might have been
that Rwanda wouldn't take military action because it would be seen as a
"destabilising" factor in the region.
The gamble didn't pay off. Both Kagame and Kabila are feeling the international
pressure on them to end conflict in Congo and the region. The window is closing
for Rwanda to take a last crack at the rebels and for Kabila to end the threat
that DRC-based insurgents pose to Rwanda and Burundi.
But Kabila is leading a government that's been delicately strung together from
several rebel groups, so he's walking a tightrope. It is striking, therefore,
that he said he would send 10,000 troops to deal with the Rwanda attack in two
weeks' time, the exact number of days Kigali had said it wanted to deal with
rebels. Kabila might well have been playing to the hardline nationalist camp
with that position, while by delaying troop deployment he was also appeasing
the eastern Congo elements in the government sympathetic to Kigali.
There has been speculation that field officers in Monuc, the UN peacekeeping
force in Congo, turned a blind eye and couldn't "see" or confirm the presence
of Rwandese troops.
In short, by November 29, Kigali had signalled to everyone its intention to
attack. And if it doesn't overstay the two weeks hear-no-evil-see-no-evil
window of "opportunity," I wouldn't be surprised if Kigali gets away with this
latest incursion with no more than a rap on the knuckles.
Charles Onyango-Obbo is managing editor in charge of media convergence at the
Nation Media Group.
E-mail: cobbo@nation.co.ke

   

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