Fletcher Security Review

Recent developments in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) offer, after almost 20 years of unending violence and conflict, a glimmer of hope. While the conditions for a lasting peace still need to be built, the recent dissolution of the Congolese rebel group known as the March 23 Movement (M23) could potentially lead to a major reduction in violence and instability in the region. As we will see, this major positive development demanded radical shifts in the attitude of the international community towards Rwanda’s support to armed proxy groups in the region. In 2013, after 15 years of tacit acceptance of Rwanda’s disruptive role, a spectacular change in policies in the US, UN, and, to a more limited extent, the UK, decisively altered Kigali’s cost-benefit calculations, and led it to abandon its proxy – the M23 – more or less to its fate.

 

To assess this major policy shift, it is important to understand the main factors that led to international tolerance of Rwanda’s behavior for so long, as well as the factors that fueled recent policy revisions.

 

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the government in Kigali has consistently denied any involvement in supporting the M23. While it would be untrue to define the M23 as solely a puppet in the hands of Kigali, there is ample evidence that the Rwandan government played a key role in supporting the creation and the initial military fortunes of the group, as it did with the M23’s predecessors, the Rally for Congolese Democracy, (RCD) from 1998 to 2003, and the National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP) from 2005 to 2009. The Rwandan army provided logistical support, helped in recruitment and directly deployed in support of M23 during all major military confrontations fought in 2012, effectively winning critical battles and swaths of territory for its proxy.

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A mix of security, economic, political, and cultural interests have motivated Rwanda’s support of abusive proxy groups in the DRC and led it to periodically send its own troops into its neighbor’s territory. Though the militia has been recently weakened, Kigali feels threatened by the FDLR, a Rwandan rebel group created by the surviving perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide that, due to instability and a lack of security enforcement, has been active under different names in eastern DRC since 1994.

 

International criminal networks systematically exploit the considerable natural resources of eastern DRC, often with the complicity of army officials from all countries involved, including Rwanda. These illegal networks were mostly created during Rwanda’s occupation of eastern DRC (1998-2002), and continue to operate in the region. Additionally, the government in Kigali has strong cultural, political, and economic bonds with the minority Rwandophone communities in the Kivus, which have been historically discriminated against in DRC. In short, Rwanda believes that exercising a dominant influence in the Kivus, which it sees as within its legitimate sphere of influence, is a fundamental interest.

 

The M23, with Rwanda’s support, ruled over parts of the North Kivu province of the DRC from April 2012 to November 2013 when it was defeated on the battlefield by a re-energized Congolese army (FARDC) backed by UN peacekeepers (MONUSCO). After over a year of on-and-off combat, the crucial element that precipitated the M23’s likely final defeat in only four days was Rwanda’s decision to stop supporting its proxy, leaving the group with little chance of success on the battlefield against superior forces.

 

As a result of the M23’s defeat, today, for the first time since 1996, there is no major Rwandan-backed armed group active in eastern DRC.

 

The international community tolerated Kigali’s disruptive behavior for 15 years. Few protested when Rwanda, with other African states, put together a coalition of Congolese rebels to topple President Mobutu in 1996. During the 1996-1997 war, the Rwandan army committed widespread abuses, mostly against Rwandan refugees in DRC, killing thousands of unarmed civilians during the military campaign. The UN sent a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the massacres and the international community, tellingly, put a lot of pressure on DRC President Laurent Desire Kabila, who was then very weak and entirely dependent on Rwandan support, to stop these abuses and bring the perpetrators to justice. This was something that was entirely outside his powers at the time. The decision not to hold Rwanda accountable for its crimes in eastern DRC, and ignore its support to proxies, dates back to those days.

 

The international community failed to hold Rwanda accountable, at least until recently, first and foremost because of its own failures. In addition to the “genocide guilt” due to the outside world’s unforgivable inaction during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, the UN was also unwilling to directly address the growing security threat posed to Rwanda by Rwandan rebels (now the FDLR) who fled to the DRC in the aftermath of the genocide. Instead, the UN and the larger international community established the pattern of “tacit acceptance” of Kigali’s interference in eastern DRC.

 

Second, the Rwandan government was able to engineer a spectacular recovery from the ashes of genocide, wisely using every single dollar invested by the donor aid community. This not only won Rwanda praise and admiration in international circles, but also created a powerful constituency of international supporters with an interest in continuing support to Rwanda. These donors were reluctant to jeopardize one of the most successful aid programs in Africa by exposing the Rwandan government’s support for the M23 in the DRC.

 

Third, the international community grew increasingly frustrated with the inefficient and corrupt DRC government, and was thus less willing to exert effort and resources in its support. There was a perception of hopelessness about the future of the DRC, stemming from the profound difficulty of addressing the multiple causes of violence, a disillusionment with the Congolese political class as a whole, and ultimately, the lack of a shared vision for helping the country move out of the conflict, particularly after the 2006 elections. Many diplomats rightly pointed out that removing Rwanda from the equation would not by itself bring peace to the DRC, and used this as an excuse to tolerate the unacceptable and to focus their attention elsewhere.

 

Finally, until recently, there was no political process or forum where the countries in the region could be brought in to discuss political, economic, and security arrangements, and where a coordinated strategy could be devised by international actors (the International Contact Group on the Great Lakes Region, which regularly gathers main donors to the region, is largely an information-sharing forum, devoid of any political clout).

 

Given this seemingly intractable situation, what “changed the tide” on this issue, and what can we learn from it?

 

As the M23 gained power and destabilized eastern DRC, the context, both within the DRC and internationally, began to shift. The UN Group of Experts gathered and made public conclusive and extensive evidence, corroborated by other sources, about the extent of Rwanda’s support to the M23. The UN also collected evidence implicating the M23 in both serious past atrocities and ongoing abuses in areas under its control. These abuses, combined with the M23’s failure to mobilize even their seemingly most natural constituencies, the Rwandophone communities in eastern DRC, eventually turned the group into a pariah movement, unanimously despised by the Congolese people as well as the international community. Advocacy groups in the US and UK launched a vigorous advocacy campaign around the issue of the M23 and its patron, aimed at making their governments reconsider uncritical support to the Rwandan government. Finally, the UN suffered one of its worst humiliations in its history of peacekeeping in November 2012, when the M23 occupied the town Goma in front of powerless peacekeeping forces.

 

Due to these shifts, 2013 saw a flurry of new initiatives to bring peace to the region. The UN engineered the signing of the “Peace, Security and Cooperation Framework,” in which 11 countries from the region explicitly committed not to support armed groups in neighboring countries. The UN then went on to approve the most ambitious mandate revision in the history of peacekeeping, authorizing MONUSCO to use force to neutralize armed groups – in other words, to go to war against them. This raised the stakes even higher for Rwanda, as it had little appetite to see its army openly fighting the Tanzanian and South African armies (the main contributors to MONUSCO’s new troops) on the battlefield, and knew that without direct military support, the M23 stood no chance.

 

This remarkable change in UN assertiveness coincided with welcomed changes in leadership at the top. Mary Robinson (UN Special Envoy), Russ Feingold (US Envoy), and Martin Kobler (new SRSG at MONUSCO) all had relatively little experience with, and expertise on, the region, which turned out to be an advantage as they did not have preconceived ideas about the conflict and did not feel bound to certain actors and states. While they insisted (unsuccessfully at the time of writing) that the DRC and M23 sign a peace agreement, they simultaneously placed enormous pressure on Kigali to stop supporting the M23. Ultimately, Kigali capitulated, enabling UN forces to defeat the M23, which formally surrendered on November 5 and fled to Uganda, where, at the time of writing, they have been disarmed and are being held in military camps by the Ugandan military.

 

Rwanda could, in principle, lay low for a while and then support the creation of another armed group. That would, however, be much more difficult than it has been in the past, given that the strong military networks built as long ago as 1998 have effectively been dismantled.

 

It is too early to completely evaluate the impact of the M23’s demise on the security situation in eastern DRC; however, the Congolese army (FARDC) and the UN are confident of success, and have committed to turning their attention to the FDLR, likely with significant impact.

 

Most other Congolese armed groups were created, at least in principle, to confront either (or both) the FDLR or the M23 rebels and protect local populations. With both these groups gone, it should be possible, though by no means easy, to achieve the demobilization of most of the remaining armed groups in the Kivus.

 

In other words, after almost 20 years of failed attempts, the end of the M23 could provoke a significant reduction of the level of violence in eastern DRC. In order to get there, it was necessary to break Rwanda’s determination to support abusive armed groups in eastern DRC, which was made possible only by a complete overhaul of the political and military tools employed by the international community and by bringing in fresh, high-quality leadership that had no “baggage” in the region.

 

Moving forward, it is necessary to separate legitimate from illegitimate concerns of all countries in the region who continue to fuel violence. The ongoing political process needs to concern itself with legitimate interests (armed groups, border security, cross-border trade and cooperation, refugee return, etc.), while the international community should continue to enforce a “zero tolerance policy” on regional governments’ support to armed groups. While Rwanda has historically been the main culprit, the DRC government has been known to support the FDLR and other armed groups, while Uganda also supported the M23, its predecessors, and other armed groups in the northern region of Ituri. The international community needs to show all countries the same determination it has shown Rwanda in 2013, standing ready to suspend aid and apply targeted sanctions against all governments and government officials that continue to support abusive armed groups.

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