Uganda at sixes and sevens as DRC rules out talks with M23

A few days after  Uganda finally fulfilled its pledge to send hundreds of troops to the restive  eastern Democratic  Republic of Congo (DRC)  under the auspices of the  East African Regional Forces  -shortened as EARF  - President Museveni issued a two-page statement in which he essentially ruled out  Ugandan forces going toe- toe with the M23 rebels that have captured swaths of that country.   

  While the UPDF  has for two years been engaged in a military campaign ostensibly to flush out the elusive Allied Democratic Forces (ADF ) from the precincts of   Beni, Virunga, and  Semuliki ,Museveni said the troops deployed in the  UPDF foray  won’t engage in any military confrontation on the account that they are ongoing peace talks between the M23 rebels and Kinshasa.   “… in that effort, we are not going to battle or fight the M-23. 

    The Congo government and the M-23, have agreed to a peace plan, which involves cessation of hostilities (fighting), withdrawal of the M-23 from some of the specified areas they had captured to other areas that have been agreed upon, etc,” Museveni said adding that the UPDF’s initial mission is to occupy some of the positions that the M23 has handed over to the East African Force as a neutral force, instead of the Congolese army which the M-23 see as enemies or armed opponents in their internal politics.  
   “We are, therefore, going to the Bunagana–Rutshuru area, not in order to fight the M-23, but to act as a neutral force as the Congolese use the time to sort out their political problems,”  Museveni said. 
 
   The notion by Museveni that they are ongoing negotiations between Felix Tshisekedi’s administration and the rebels was also shared when Kenya’s William Ruto who contributed the first contingent of troops under the EARF, visited Kigali and addressed the media with  Paul Kagame who is accused of not just enabling M23  but also supplying them with special forces and heavy military hardware. “...the M23 operates more and more like a conventional army, relying on equipment that is much more sophisticated than in the past,”  said  Mathias Gillmann,  then spokesperson of  the United  Nations Organization Stabilisation Mission in DR Congo or MONUSCO  in 2022  - who was later expelled after a request from Kinshasa following his statement that DRC did not have the military means to confront the M23.  

    Ruto and  Kagame talked about how a political solution advanced by the East African region leaders, will give a front seat to people with a “direct stake” in the eastern DRC  to help end the perpetual conflict in the area. 
  Ruto, acknowledged Kagame,   for what he termed as an “understanding of the issues in eastern DRC,”  before going back to the old theme of  East African countries teaming up to pacify the war-ravaged country.  This is a collective concern for both of us. The heads of state of the EAC decided after the DRC joined the bloc that we must take it upon ourselves to help secure eastern DRC,” Ruto said.  
  
   Kagame, who has come under international pressure to stop arming the rebels, forged a conciliatory tone saying finger-pointing isn’t helpful. 
    “Maybe for many years, people have concentrated on apportioning blame on all parties, on who is right, who is wrong. It has gone on forever. So that means there is something wrong with that approach to dealing with the issues,”  said Kagame .
    “I think the best way to deal with the issues is to study, understand and deal with the root causes of that problem or any other problem anywhere. If you don’t look at the root causes, then you tend to give a partial solution and then problems keep coming back every other time,”  Kagame said.
   The whole idea of talks between M23 and Kinshasa have been dismissed by the minions of Felix Tshisekedi, the Congolese president. 
 
   “I would like to make two clarifications: the first, we are not negotiating with the M23. The second precision, which it will be necessary to remember that everything was well defined by the Luanda press release of November 23, 2022. This press release stipulated the immediate and unconditional ceasefire of the M23, their withdrawal from occupied positions and localities to Mount Sabinyo for their cantonment and disarmament to enter into the process that will follow,” Prof Serge Tshibangu, Felix Tshisekedi’s envoy to EAC ,told Congolese media recently.  Tshibangu’s comments were buttressed by his boss,  Tshisekedi, who   went as far as ruling out any political dialogue with the M23 rebels. The main accusations Tshisekedi levelled against M23 is that  every time  Kinshasa engages in talks,  the rebels  instead use that opportunity to  undermine government security agencies  and carry out more attacks.   “There is no question of political dialogue with this group.”  he said I say it and I want to make it clear that it will never be a question of it. 

   They take advantage of these dialogues to infiltrate us and justify the attacks. What message are you giving to those who execute certain soldiers/policemen in the FARDC/PNC on the grounds that they are infiltrated?” said Tshisekedi after meeting with Swiss President, Alain Berset  
It wouldn’t be the first time  East African leaders struggle with Congolese authorities to come to an agreement with M23 rebels who are large of  Tutsi extraction and are classified as terrorists in the vast mineral-rich country. 

In 2013, Museveni deal-making skills were  tested and his clout in the Great Lakes region  challenged by a delegation sent by Joseph Kabila, then president of the DRC, who refused to sign a peace deal with the M23 rebels, in the process damaging the Museveni’s clout in the region. 
Kabila’s entourage virtually kept Museveni and Edward Ssekandi,   then  Ugandan Vice President , waiting for hours, and despite being at the venue, refused to show up in the room where the accord was supposed to be penned, leaving the international community stranded, too.  

  Kabila’s  contingent refused  to sign the peace deal with M23 saying they are only interested in signing what they called a  “declaration.  “We want to sign a declaration, but the mediator [ Uganda] , for a reason we do not understand, wants to impose an accord upon us,”  said Lambert Mende,  then DR Congo’s Information minister  “If he changed his mind, even tonight, we could sign.” The deal would eventually be signed but  not in Kampala  but Kenyan capital  Nairobi with Museveni and then Malawian  President Joyce Banda,  who was the chairman of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), acting as mediators. 
 
“The DRC government and M23 have respectively signed declarations reflecting the consensus reached during the Kampala Dialogue on steps necessary to end the armed activities of the M23, towards long-term stability, reconciliation and development in the country,” the joint ICGLR-SADC final communique stated.
Under the  “ declaration”,  the rebel outfit were entitled to amnesty, but no amnesty was granted to perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, or gross violations of human rights.  

Furthermore -   both sides also agreed  to the release of prisoners; the end of M23 as a rebel movement and the possibility to establish itself as a political party; and the return of extorted and looted properties during the M23’s brief occupation of Goma in November 2012. The two declarations also included provisions for the return of refugees and internally displaced persons to their homes. 
In the past year alone, the fighting has displaced more than 100,000 people, exacerbating an ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region which includes 2.6 million internally displaced persons and 6.4 million in need of food and emergency aid.

 “The document is very clear: there is no blanket amnesty. Those who are presumed to have committed criminal behaviour in terms of international law, war crimes or crimes against humanity will not be reinserted into society, ” Mende told Reuters news agency. Even before  the  declaration was signed,  M23  had been militarily defeated and it lay inactive for practically  10 years until late 2021 when it ratcheted up attacks again - reemerging from dormancy in November 2021, accusing the DRC of ignoring a promise to integrate its fighters into the army.  
In March 2022, ferocity of fighting  deepened with the shooting down of a United Nations helicopter, killing six UN troops. 

In addition, M23 took control of vast parts of Rutshuru territory. Chiefly, the raid on the Rumangabo military base in May 2022 and the capture of the Bunagana town on the Ugandan- DR Congo border,  in June, consolidated M23’s control of North Kivu.  
Whereas the former attack provided M23 with access to weapons, the latter operation increased its revenue base through illegal taxation of the border trade. In late November 2022, M23 also seized the strategic ‘groupements’ of Kibumba and Buhumba, in Rutshuru territory. This moved  allowed the rebels  to cut off Route National 2, a major access road to Goma-  the capital of North Kivu in eastern   DR Congo.  Accordingly, some feared that their control of supplies to Goma was a first step in reconquering the city.  

Following pressure from both the West and within the region,  the M23   has since vacated some of these positions citing a ceasefire agreement and they have been taken by  UPDF soldiers in what has now been called “ peace mission”  which has no time frame. 
“The UPDF peace contingent in the Democratic Republic of Congo shall remain there until peace and stability is attained. The situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo shall determine how long the UPDF soldiers on peace mission will remain there,”  the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen Wilson Mbadi, said during a press conference at the Bunagana border post in Kisoro District early in April.