Between the DRC and Rwanda, a crisis that is becoming more radical

A deceptive calm reigns on the border between the twin cities of Gisenyi and Goma. ” As per usual “, assure the customs officers, Rwandans and Congolese mingle in the short queues that stretch on either side of the barriers. The crossing point is one of the busiest in Central Africa. However, the tension is far from having subsided between the two neighboring states.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) accuses Rwanda of supporting the March 23 Movement (M23), an armed group from a former Congolese Tutsi rebellion, which took up arms again at the end of 2021 despite peace agreements signed in 2013 Kigali, which rejects these allegations, denounces for its part increasingly violent “anti-Rwandan” hate speech on the Congolese side.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his Congolese counterpart Felix Tshisekedi were both present Monday, June 20 in Nairobi, at a summit of the East African Community where the deployment of a regional force was recorded in order to stabilize eastern DRC. ” Placed under the military command of Kenya, this force should be operational in the coming weeks and should not include within it elements of the Rwandan army. », underlined the Congolese presidency on Twitter at the end of the meeting. The Kigali authorities had nevertheless made it known that they were ready to send men.

“A military intervention will not be enough to calm the situation. This option has proven ineffective in the region since the 1990s. Only a political solution between the Rwandan and Congolese presidents can resolve the crisis,” believes a diplomat, for whom “the positions of the two countries have become more radical”.

Exchange of fire at the border

Concern is at its height after a soldier from the Armed Forces of the DRC (FARDC) crossed the border at the Petite Barrière post on Friday and opened fire in the direction of Rwanda, causing an exchange of fire. The soldier was shot dead and at least two Rwandan policemen injured.

At the request of the Rwandan army, an investigation was opened by the Extended Joint Verification Mechanism (JVCM), a regional mediation body. For their part, the Congolese authorities sent military officials to recover the body of the deceased, who remained in Rwanda. When the procession arrived in Goma, capital of the province of North Kivu, hundreds of people gathered on one of the main arteries of the city chanted songs in tribute to the soldier.

Several thousand demonstrators had already gathered on this same avenue, Wednesday June 15, in support of the FARDC and to protest against what many consider to be a “Rwanda aggression”. Property and businesses belonging to Rwandans, Rwandophones or Congolese Tutsi were targeted.

Violence that has spread to neighboring provinces, west of the Kivus. In Maniema, a Banyamulenge herdsman – a Tutsi pastoral community with distant Rwandan origins but present in Congo since the 19^e century – was lynched and then burned on Saturday in the streets of Kalima, a mining town, on the sidelines of a hostile demonstration in Kigali. “The tension is still very high and we ask the Banyamulenge to remain hidden”, warns a member of the Provincial Civil Society, a group of civic associations.

In Kinshasa, the United Nations Joint Office for Human Rights in the DRC is sounding the alarm. “Clearly identified individuals call for attacks on people and their property on the basis of their ethnicity [tutsi] », deplored the organization on Sunday, accusing in particular Jules Kalubi, one of the leaders of Standing Parliament (an association claiming to belong to the ruling party, the UDPS), of having shared the addresses of certain Rwandans on Twitter and called for them to be sent home. them. Other young people, presenting themselves as “the special brigade of the UDPS”, were filmed armed with machetes in the streets of the capital, threatening to ” take action “.

The ruling party repudiated these calls for hatred and condemned the “tribal stigma”. At the same time, the Supreme Defense Council asked the security forces to“avoid the manhunt”, while greeting “the strong patriotic mobilization” and “the unwavering support of the populations for the FARDC”.

Suspension of bilateral agreements

The Congolese soldiers are in bad shape. On June 13, they lost control of Bunagana, a commercial crossroads in the province of North Kivu, located on the border with Uganda and a few kilometers from Rwanda. The insurgents also claimed, on June 17, the destruction of a Congolese helicopter in the area, towards Chengero.

Holding Rwanda responsible for the security deterioration in the east, the Kinshasa authorities suspended, on Wednesday June 16, all the bilateral agreements signed with Kigali, including that on the extraction of part of the gold from the eastern DRC, endorsed during a meeting between Presidents Félix Tshisekedi and Paul Kagame in Goma in June 2021.

“Rwanda continues to try to occupy our land rich in gold, coltan and cobalt to exploit it and to [son] own profit. There is an economic war for the battle for resources », wrote the Congolese Head of State in a press release published by the Ministry of Communication on 17 June. “The suspension of agreements is a prerogative of the Congolese government. These texts benefit both our peoples, so we hope that one day they will be restored,” reacted Yolande Makolo, the spokesperson for the Rwandan government, during a press conference the same day.

Rwanda denies any support for the M23 and assures that none of its soldiers is in the DRC. At the same time, he continues to accuse the Congolese army of fighting alongside the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Rwandan Hutu rebel group initially formed by former genocidaires, and denounces the complicity of Monusco, engaged on the ground alongside the FARDC.

At the end of May, after the Rwandan army claimed that the DRC had fired rockets into its territory, Vincent Biruta, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, told the press that Rwanda “would not stand idly by in the event of a new attack and would have the right to respond to defend the security of its territory and its citizens”.

The tone has since softened: in an interview with the France 24 television channel on Friday, just hours after the shooting at the border between Gisenyi and Goma, the minister said he did not want to start a war because of this ” incident “. A new outbreak of fever would be all the more unwelcome as Kigali hosts, from June 20 to 25, the meeting of Commonwealth heads of government. Thirty leaders are expected in the Rwandan capital.