KASHUGA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) – The government soldiers manning an outpost high above the town of Kashuga have a panoramic view of the hills and valleys of eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, home to hundreds of Rwandan Hutu rebels their government has promised to crush.
But three weeks after Congo’s army launched an offensive against the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), the outpost’s commander has received no orders to attack the rebel group.
Just a few hundred metres away across the Mweso River are the hills where the rebels – whose 1,400 fighters include the remnants of militia involved in Rwanda’s 1994 genocide –
have their hideouts, local people say.
“There is no war,” said the commander of the hill-top camp, a huddle of tents where soldiers drift around aimlessly. “Here, near us, there are no operations.”
The faltering start to the highly-anticipated campaign in North Kivu province has revived doubts about the will and capacity of Congo’s army to defeat a group at the heart of two decades of conflict in Africa’s Great Lakes region.
Many analysts believe that defeating the FDLR is critical to breaking a catastrophic cycle of violence in eastern Congo, whose rich deposits of gold, tin and tantalum and vast ungoverned spaces have invited meddling by its more powerful neighbours.
Since fleeing into eastern Congo after the genocide, FDLR gunmen have waged periodic war with the government and other armed groups. Their presence on Congolese soil has served as pretext for a series of military interventions by Rwanda.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
The rebels portray themselves as defenders of Hutu refugees in Congo and say they wish to return to Rwanda through a negotiated settlement with Kigali. The U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo (MONUSCO) says that their covert purpose appears to be the overthrow of the Rwandan government.
Millions died of conflict, hunger and disease during a 1998 to 2003 war in Congo, fuelled by Rwandan intervention, and the region remains plagued by dozens of armed militias.
Previous campaigns against the FDLR, including operations in 2009 backed by Rwandan and U.N. forces, weakened but failed to dismantle the group.
TOWNS RECAPTURED
The army commander in eastern Congo, General Leon Mushale, says it has recovered more than two dozen towns since late February. He said about 182 FDLR fighters have either surrendered, been killed or captured.
Yet farmers along the road to Kashuga said the FDLR acts with impunity, descending on their fields in gangs of up to 50 to extort food and transport. The army, meanwhile, has announced the capture of only one senior rebel leader.
The slow progress has reinforced doubts among many analysts about the government’s will to take on the group. Reports by U.N. panels of experts have documented commercial ties between FARDC elements and the FDLR. The two forces have also collaborated in the past against Rwandan-backed rebels.
The Enough Project, an advocacy group, has estimated that the FDLR earns more than $30 million a year from the illicit charcoal trade. The group is also involved in the smuggling of gold and other minerals and receives financing from overseas networks, according to the U.N. experts.
“Senior members of the security establishment have not been entirely cooperative – let’s put it that way – with the operations and still maintain contacts with FDLR leadership,” said Jason Stearns, director of the Congo Research Group at New York University and a former U.N. expert in Congo.
Fidel Bafilemba, a researcher for Enough in the lakeside capital of North Kivu province, Goma, said the FDLR is politically useful for Congo President Joseph Kabila.
“The policy is to keep the FDLR as long as possible in eastern Congo because if it’s gone Kabila himself will no longer have an alibi to not provide the basics to his people – water, education, food, security,” he said.
Kabila came to power in 2001 following the assassination of his father and went on to win disputed elections in 2006 and 2011.
He is barred by the constitution from standing for a third elected term in an election scheduled for next year, but critics suspect him of seeking to prolong his time in office, provoking violent protests in January that killed at least 40 people.
The Rwandan-backed M23 rebellion, which waged an insurrection for two years before reaching a peace agreement with the government in 2013, previously posed the biggest security threat in the east.
During the conflict, the U.N. Group of Experts documented low-level collaboration between the Congolese army and FDLR.
