Angola troops enter crowded DRC war-theatre

President Tshisekedi, who has openly rebuked the ‘inept’ East African Community Regional Force (EACRF) in dealing with the M23 rebels, under the overall command of Kenya’s Major General, Jeff Nyagah, according to highly placed security sources in the region, believes that Angola could ramp up its firepower to deal with the outfit he accuses of being a proxy army of Kigali. 

Uganda, which recently deployed troops in the flashpoint Bunagana at its border post in the South with DR Congo, told Kinshasha that it would avoid a shooting war with M23.
“…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, withdrawal of the M-23 from some of the specified areas they had captured to other areas that have been agreed upon,” President Museveni said at the end of last month.

He argued: “Fighting may come later if one of the non-state armed groups does not accept peace on what we all regard as reasonable conditions. The East African authority [the Heads of State], would then have to mandate us to fight if one of the stakeholders refuses to implement the peace agreement we have agreed on.”

However, whereas Uganda has recently enjoyed warm ties with the DR Congo government, its neutrality towards M23 has created suspicion among the political elite in Kinshasha, who expected the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) to confront the aggressor.

When M23 bands captured Bunagana in June 2022, the Speaker of the DR Congo National Assembly and key ally of President Tshisekedi, Christophe Mboso, moved a motion to suspend all military and economic agreements between Kinshasha and Kampala. 

The Deputy Defence ministry spokesperson, Col Deo Akiiki, told Monitor on Thursday last week: “Our mandate is under the East African Community Regional Force. We shall continue working as per the mandate and the Status of Mission Agreement (SOFA). 

Anything outside that is not our concern, we don’t know under which terms DR Congo will be deploying Angola troops.”

Mr Philip Kasaija, a regional peace and security expert, who teaches International Law at Makerere University, said: “There have been these accusations that Uganda and Rwanda are helping M23. We have mechanisms that were put in place a while ago, the joint expanded verification mechanism under the IGCLR (International Conference on the Great Lakes Region) and the idea is to either confirm or find out basically about who is helping who.

Whenever we have these issues to do with clashes between forces or help coming from outside the DR Congo, which mechanism is meant to do the verification and the verification means either to confirm or to tell us the truth in what is happening on the ground. That is why the DR Congo government invited Angola.”

The latest deployment raises the spectre of a regional intra-state conflict, which has previously haunted the country.

In 1996, Angola, which treated Mobuto Sese Seko as an implacable foe for giving Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA rebels sanctuary in the DR Congo and funding, had relied on its north-west flank to supply weaponry in an alliance with Uganda and Rwanda that led to the defeat of Congo’s ailing despot.

But as a result of interlocking issues that arose, Angola, in 1998 defended DR Congo’s new leader, Laurent Kabila, who marshalled further support from Angola, Namibia, Chad, Sudan and Zimbabwe against Uganda and Rwanda, which he accused of aggression and looting the resource-rich eastern DR Congo. The war, which convulsed Uganda’s neighbouring state, resulted in the death of millions and the plunder of minerals, among others.

In February 2022, the Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Uganda should pay Shs1.1trillion, a middle-of-the-road settlement, far less than the $11b, the equivalent of Shs38 trillion that Kinshasha had earlier on claimed for the loss of lives, plunder, looting and exploitation of minerals during its occupation. 
Fears continue to stalk DR Congo that supremacy fights might spark a regional conflict.

 Regional analysts claim that M23 is divided into two cohorts, one paying allegiance to Kigali and another to Kampala. Mr Kasaija argues that whenever the resource-rich eastern DR Congo is destabilized, it provides an opportunity for those from outside to ‘fish in the troubled waters.’ 

In June 2000, Uganda and Rwanda engaged in a six-day trench-war during a series of armed confrontations between two former allies forces around the city of Kisangani in the DR Congo. The war formed part of the wider Second Congo War between 1998 and 2003.

Kisangani was also a scene of fighting between Rwandan and Ugandan troops between August 1999 and 5 May 2000. However, the conflicts of June 2000 were the most lethal and seriously damaged a large part of the city, with more than 6,600 rounds of ammunition fired.

Mr Kasaija argues that whereas a number of issues remain unresolved, “we may have a lasting solution to the problem because for a very long time, the East African countries were disengaged, even as a bloc, they were not interested. So the DR Congo joining the EAC, I think was a gamechanger so that the countries of the region now realised that in order to have that integration logic of expanding the market, then you need stability in the DR Congo.” 

Kampala recently scored a major diplomatic coup when its allies, former DR Congo vice-president, Pierre-Bemba, was appointed deputy premier for Defence and Mbusa Nyamwisi, as the minister for regional integration.

Mr Bemba was detained for over 10 years at the ICC in 2018. He spent 11 years in custody after a war crimes warrant was issued in regard to the conflict in the neighbouring Central African Republic.

Mr Bemba’s rebel Movement for the Liberation of Congo received both covert and overt support from Kampala between 1998 and 2002 while Nyamwisi’s RDC-D Kisangani rebel faction was also a key ally of Kampala. 

As the region continues to seek a peaceful settlement in regard to the conflict, the East African Community Chiefs of Defence Forces/Staff convened on February 9, 2023 in Nairobi, as a follow-up of the 20th Extra-Ordinary Summit of the EAC Heads of State held in Bujumbura on February 4, 2023 to evaluate the security situation in Eastern DR Congo.

The Nairobi meeting was attended by the Chief of Defence forces from DR Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan and Burundi to consider the report compiled by defence experts, who had met a day earlier in Nairobi in a meeting chaired by Burundi’s Gen Prime Niyongabo. 

According to a classified document seen by NTV, there has been a re-alignment in deployment of the regional force. Two UPDF battalions will be deployed in the areas of Bunagana, Kiwanja, Rutshuru and Mabenga areas, while Burundi will deploy in Sake, Kirolirwe and Kitchanga, Kenyan forces will take command of Kibumba, Rumangabo, Tongo, Bwiza and Kishishe and South Sudan to deploy in Rumangabo and co-locate with the Kenyan contingent. All these areas are located in the war-wracked North Kivu province in Eastern DR Congo.

“First of all, as Ugandans might have known that earlier this year, we deployed in DR Congo under the East African Community Regional Force. In these areas where we deployed, they are occupied by M23 before our deployment. A state of emergency was declared by the Congolese government and since the signing of the ceasefire agreement, we have been trying to see that this takes effect by deploying our forces,” Col Akiiki said, adding: “To-date, I confirm that the area of Bunagana, Rutshuru and Kiwanja in general have been fully occupied.

Our forces are moving on into other areas that are supposed to be occupied especially those still being held by M23, M23 has cooperated and they have withdrawn.” 

He told Daily Monitor that they had an expanded joint verification mechanism team that visited Rutshuru and they had quite a lot of discussions. 

“There were presentations from the commanders to show the posture of our troops and how they have deployed. We also had presentations from M23 about their concerns, this was a team mandated by the regional heads in Nairobi. Of course they are looking at the entire operation of the joint forces,” Col Akiiki added. 

In November 2021, Uganda sent nearly 4,000 troops under Operation Shujaa to decimate Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels hiding in the jungles of eastern DR Congo.

“I want to assure Ugandans that this operation has been going on very well, achieving all the set objectives. Quite a number of ADF commanders have been killed, the most recent being Seka, who was killed in Mwalika Valley and earlier on Seguja and very many others. Hundreds of their camps have been destroyed, those remaining are in small groups, and our troops are determined to follow them,” Col Akiiki said.  

He further said the Chiefs of Defence Forces of both Uganda and DR Congo recently met in Goma and are currently reviewing Operation Shujaa to observe “how the operation is going, what our achievements are, and the levels of troops and logistics. This is done in a very cordial way by Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC) and UPDF, they are working together and there is no pull and push.”

A report by the monitoring group of experts on DR Congo, submitted to the UN Security Council on December 16, 2022, revealed that Uganda’s joint military operation with the Congolese army “has not yielded the expected result of defeating or substantially weakening ADF.”

The experts claimed that despite the destruction of certain camps and some arrests, the leadership of ADF remains intact and the terrorist rebel group returned to its traditional strongholds, including near the UPDF bases in the DRC at the border with Uganda, where the army tried to establish a buffer zone.

But Col Akiiki said: “If you compare the attacks the ADF was doing at that time before we went into DRC, it was really massive, it was on a daily basis. Today, let’s be truthful to ourselves that ADF is only capable of carrying out isolated attacks and they know very well when they carry out an attack, they raise our attention and we go for them. Whoever argues to the contrary, I don’t know what facts he is basing on.” 

The Nairobi meeting observed the need for distinct operational boundaries between contingents for the re-aligned forces. The regional force was tasked to deal with other rebel groups including the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) and operations would continue against other armed groups including foreign ones— the Allied Democratic Forces, Red Tabara as well as local armed groups.

This is meant to allow for disarmament, demobilisation, community recovery, and stabilisation, which will enable the resettlement of IDPs and the return of refugees to their respective countries of origin.  

It was agreed that the Status of Forces Agreement, (SOFA) signed on September 8, 2022 should be renewed. 

The experts proffered that adherence to the ceasefire by all parties is critical to the implementation of all directives by the Heads of States Summit in Bujumbura.

Some incidents of ceasefire violations have been registered since the Bujumbura summit and the warring parties must unconditionally cease hostilities with immediate effect, reads part of the summit report.

The meeting observed that the previous withdraw timelines directed by the Luanda and Nairobi processes as well as by the CDFs/CDCs meetings in Bujumbura and Dares-Salaam were not adhered to.
During the meeting, it was decided that the new withdraw timelines must be adhered to by all warring factions.

To facilitate the new timelines, it was agreed that the ceasefire must be in place to facilitate organised and coordinated withdraw of M23. There is need to establish a monitoring and verification mechanism, and the concurrent withdraw of all armed groups, and the deployment of the regional force in the vacated areas and areas earmarked for M23’s phased withdraw, which will last a period of about 30 days.

The current crisis erupted in November 2021, when the largely defunct March 23 Movement (M23) militant group carried out lightning strikes on military positions of the FARDC in the villages of Chanzu and Runyonyi in North Kivu Province, just west of the Ugandan and Rwandan borders.

This occurred the same month that Ugandan forces were deployed to the province to pursue the ADF, a Ugandan rebel group that also operates in North Kivu and Ituri. In October and November 2021, Uganda had been a target of suicide bomb attacks that President Yoweri Museveni blamed on the ADF. 

By March 2022, M23 had seized key parts of Rutshuru territory, bordering Uganda and Rwanda. In May, they overran the Rumangabo military base, FARDC’s largest military installation in North Kivu. They then pushed south toward the provincial capital, Goma, and across Rwanda’s border city of Gisenyi. In June, another M23 prong operating farther north overran the border city of Bunagana, forcing Congolese soldiers to flee to Uganda.