How sincere is FDLR militia disarmament?

Reports that the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) militia are abandoning violence and ready to return home is a carefully laid out ruse, a Genocide researcher said yesterday. Tom Ndahiro’s assessment builds on growing concerns that the commitment to fight the FDLR is nothing but rhetoric that is coined at conferences and by special envoys. “My take is that those (disarmament reports) are games they are playing to show that they are interested in abandoning violence. It could be advice from their friends from outside, Monusco and the Congolese government. The issue of abandoning violence has been on table for too long,” Ndahiro said. The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) relayed information, last week, from the Congolese government that the FDLR “have announced to surrender and will hand over their arms on Friday, May 30, at Baleusa and at Lubumba, in North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, respectively.” The next day, only nearly 100 militiamen surrendered. Reports suggest that most were sick, physically weak and old fighters, and the arms they handed over were obsolete. At a UN Security Council briefing on Monusco on March 14, Rwanda’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Amb. Eugène-Richard Gasana, put the militia’s current fighting capability at an estimated 3,640 “with infantry integral weapons” and likely “to increase due to ongoing recruitment and training.” Branded by the UN as a terrorist group, FDLR was formed in neighbouring DR Congo, in September 2000, when the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda, a group largely composed of members of the Interahamwe and former Rwandan Armed Forces (ex-FAR) that – together – carried out the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, agreed to dissolve. After the Interahamwe and former exFAR were defeated in 1994, they took refuge in eastern DR Congo where they have lived for over two decades and caused mayhem with impunity. The justification for the disarmament hoax, Ndahiro explains, rests in the fact that “it is embarrassing” for the UN mission in the DR Congo (Monusco) and its new well-equipped special UN Force Intervention Brigade (FIB). Last October, it took the Congolese army and the FIB four days to dislodge the M23 rebels from their strongholds in North Kivu Province. Led by Tanzanian and South African troops, the FIB is the UN’s first peacekeeping unit mandated to conduct targeted operations to neutralise armed groups in the eastern DR Congo. After trouncing the M23, next on its list was to be the FDLR, “but nothing was done,” says Ndahiro. No engagement Excuses that FDLR’s modus operandi was different from that of M23 and thus difficult to locate and attack was a pretext frequently used to defend Monusco’s inaction. “They are trying to save face. It is a spin by Monusco and, especially Tanzania and South Africa, but mostly Tanzania, which has been an open spokesperson for the FDLR,” Ndahiro adds. “If you can defeat M23, why then fail to engage, militarily, with FDLR? I have never heard of any single day when they [Monusco] seriously engaged FDLR yet they know where the militia are located. All I hear is a pat on the back for the FDLR.” The Chairperson of the Rwanda Demobilisation and Reintegration Commission (RDRC), Jean Sayinzoga, also described whatever was going on, on the other side of the border, was nothing but a complex web of conspiracies designed to maintain the FDLR militia in DR Congo, while, at the same time, hoodwinking the world about realities on the ground. “These are things they do deliberately. Of the number supposed to gather in North Kivu, only about 70 are there,” Sayinzoga said. “What is happening now is not different from their Sant’Egidio conference in 2005. Or, the plan, later, to relocate them further from the Rwandan border.” In February 2005, a meeting between Kinshasa and FDLR leadership was held in Rome, Italy, facilitated by Sant’Egidio, a Christian community recognised by the Vatican as a “Church public lay association.” After the Sant’Egidio talks, on March 31, 2005, the FDLR released a declaration, among others, agreeing to end the armed fight, not to voluntary disarm and not to engage in any offensive against Rwanda. However, they never committed to it. “A few days ago, as far as I know, they also said some 1,400 of their people in Mwenga [FDLR stronghold in South Kivu] require at least three days to move to the area designated for disarmament. But let’s wait and give them the benefit of doubt. If they finally hand themselves in, the better; If they don’t, then their lies will finally run out. The world will definitely know,” Sayinzoga said. More than a year after the UN Security Council adopted resolution 2098 to disarm FDLR, it remains ominously unclear whether Monusco or the Congolese army are willing to move against the militia. In February, Dorian Lacombe of the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations’ Department of Field Support told this paper that Monusco is still committed to Resolution 2098, to disarm all armed groups in eastern DR Congo that are threatening civilians’ security. And that “Monusco’s priority remains the FDLR and then ADF.” Since then, the FIB, based in North Kivu and comprising over 3,000 troops has not moved to disarm the FDLR. In a tweet this week, the US ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, renewed the call for the UN to walk the talk. “Remaining #FDLR militants need to lay down arms immediately. #DRC government and UN force must forcibly disarm those FDLR who won’t,” she tweeted. Current FDLR situation At a UN Security Council briefing on Monusco, on March 14, Rwanda’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Amb. Eugène-Richard Gasana, reiterated that it was high time “we see” a change of attitude of the DR Congo government towards the FDLR. Currently, he said, FDLR was engaged in the following activities: - Enhancing collaboration with FARDC, especially at operation level. This has enabled FDLR to refit, re-arm, share intelligence, have freedom of action and free passage for infiltration and terror attacks in Rwanda. Since July 2013 to date, 42 FDLR terror elements have been arrested and are undergoing prosecution in Rwandan courts; - Mobilisation, recruitment, training and establishment of terror networks in Rwanda. These activities are facilitated by provision of safe passage and logistics by FARDC; - The recent claim by Monusco that FDLR is located in populated areas is a sheer lie; instead the outfit has most of its forward units in Virunga National Park in North Kivu Province. It also maintains its dispositions in unpopulated areas of Mwenga and Uvira Territories in South Kivu; and - Illegal mining and taxation in eastern DR Congo to sustain the war effort.