Can the DR Congo government be trusted to commit to the Declaration of Principles?

Dare we hope that, at long last, there is a possibility of real, sustainable, lasting peace in DR Congo (and thus the wider Great Lakes Region)? The foreign ministers of DR Congo and Rwanda hosted by the US government last Friday signed a declaration of principles for peace. It indeed was a momentous occasion. Foreign Affairs Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe commenting, said “this represents a real conversation on how to resolve the situation in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.” This real conversation obviously involves burning issues like the insecurity caused by groups such as the FDLR, an outfit with a virulently hateful agenda against the administration in Kigali that’s based in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That’s not coincidental since it’s where FDLR was born, from the remnants of the defeated perpetrators of the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The so-called Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (French acronym FDLR) came about when members of the FAR – the defeated army of the Habyarimana regime – as well as high-ranking civilian members of the defeated genocidal regime, and elements of the notorious Interahamwe militias came together in Kinshasa in 2000, to form it. When these people fled (to the former Zaire) they were never disarmed, as international covenants demanded. Rather they enjoyed all the freedom they wanted to wreak havoc in eastern DR Congo, massacring the Tutsi communities there and disseminating their anti-Tutsi hate, while all the time working on their true, long-term goal: to re-invade Rwanda, topple the administration of President Kagame, and finish the genocide they started. Not long after Tshisekedi took power in 2019, he took his country’s alliance with this group – which also was culpable in massacres of Western tourists in places such as Uganda’s Bwindi Forest that earned them international terrorist status – to new heights. Tshisekedi integrated the FDLR into his government. There were FDLR affiliated cabinet ministers in Tshisekedi’s government, and there are now. There were members of parliament in the Congolese legislature affiliated to the group, and there are now. Not only that, Tshisekedi decided to fully integrate fighters of the anti-Rwanda terror group into his country’s military, FARDC. It’s been said FDLR actually dictates policy in Kinshasa. The big question then is what will the government of President Tshisekedi, after signing the Declaration of Principles, do about this group? Can Kinshasa be expected to get to work dismantling it, and all its networks in DR Congo especially when their anti-Rwanda agenda is so Aligned and intertwined? Remember when, not so long ago, the president of DR Congo was proclaiming loudly about his goal of “regime change in Kigali”? Can President Tshisekedi be expected to demonstrate he is fully committed to the Declaration of Principles by making the announcement that he is disowning FDLR, and is working on a plan to dismantle it such that it can never again threaten the security of Rwanda from within Congolese borders? This would require a 180 degree turn in attitudes in Kinshasa, and a demonstrable commitment to the task that would be nothing short of miraculous if the Tshisekedi regime did it. Color me skeptical. Also, that would only be part of the work of turning DR Congo around, into an entity that adheres to the norms of good neighborliness and as a state in good standing with others in the international community. For starters, there is the anti-Tutsi hate ideology that the regime has been fanning, targeting herder, pastoralist communities of the east and that fed ongoing pogroms and ethnic cleansing against them in the Kivus – that is, until the M23/AFC movement liberated its people from the mass murderers. Shall we see the Kinshasa administration do an about-turn on this issue? Shall we see Kinshasa actually hold to account the mass murderers, who include not only the FDLR, but other militias such as the so-called “Wazalendo” – local bandits in the pay of Kinshasa – as well as numerous elements of the FARDC itself, and try them for their crimes? Will the Tshisekedi administration acknowledge the Kinyarwanda-speaking communities of the Kivus and elsewhere as Congolese citizens, with the full rights of Congolese in Kinshasa or wherever else they think they are “more Congolese”? The discriminatory, violent tendencies against those they call “ba-Rwandais”; the hate speech that nourishes it and that’s in fact all part of a tribalist agenda that long ago morphed into a virulent (but unprovoked) anti-Rwanda hate, aren’t things that can evaporate overnight. These are things which, to overcome, indeed there are no short cuts. They require Kinshasa adopting levels of goodwill, a prodigious work ethic, and adherence to signed commitments that they’ve never demonstrated before. Not when it was peace plans or roadmaps adopted in Luanda and Nairobi, nor when it was any other initiative endorsed by organs like the EAC and the AU. Can Tshisekedi and his government turn over a new leaf? Time will tell.

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Can the DR Congo government be trusted to commit to the Declaration of Principles?