Dr Gary K. Busch

The Banyamulenge are ethnic Tutsis who left their homes in Rwanda to settle in North Kivu province in the DRC in the mid-1980s. They are Kinyarwanda-speakers, just like the ethnic Hutu who also migrated from Rwanda to the DRC. Many of the Banyamulenge thought of themselves as Congolese. Indeed, it was the Banyamulenge who spearheaded the Laurent Kabila uprising against Mobuto. However, in August 198 it was the Banyamulenge who led the revolt against Kabila. The relations between Kabila and the Tutsis soured; he expelled the remaining Rwandan soldiers from the country. Rebel forces in Bukavu, Uvira and Goma -- the same eastern towns where the anti-Mobutu revolt began -- now battled forces loyal to Kabila. 

Three prominent Banyamulenge political leaders fled the Congo. One of them, Foreign Minister Bizima Karaha, went to South Africa. The other two are Deogratias Bugera, formerly minister for presidential affairs in Kabila's government, and Moise Nyarugabo, who served as Kabila's chief aide during the war against Mobutu. These were prominent in the war which began by the Rwandans and the Ugandans against the Laurent Kabila Government. Kabila sought and received the military support of Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe. With their assistance they drove the Ugandans and Rwandans from the country and a peace deal was arranged. 

Unfortunately the end of the Rwandan civil war led to the French escorting a large number of Hutu fighters, the Interahamwe, out of Rwanda to settle in the DRC, especially South Kivu. There they carried on their running battle with the Tutsis (in this case Banyamulenge Tutis) with the support of indigenous bands of Congolese fighters known as the Mayi-Mayi.

In the effort to restore peace to the area Kabila ordered that all fighting groups be integrated into the nation DRC Army the integrated Forces Armées de la Republic Democratic du Congo (FARDC). Many of the Banyamulenge soldiers refused to integrate. These included Col Jules Mutebusi, who led his troops to occupy Bukavu for a week in June 2004, Gen Laurent Nkunda, who is based in North Kivu's Masisi area, Gen Patrick Masunzu, who commanded a brigade based in South Kivu's Minembwe area and many others.

Mutebusi's bid to take Bukavu failed, mainly because most members of the community backed Gen Masunzu, who helped the army in getting Mutebusi out of Bukavu.. Masunzu's brigade remained out of the army’s 'brassage' [reintegration process]. The Banyamulenge began to fight among themselves and they were considered a threat to the region, especially among the UN peacekeepers in the region. In the wake of the signing of the Lusaka Peace Agreement by the Democratic Republic of the Congo and five regional States signed the Lusaka Ceasefire Agreement in July 1999, the UN Security Council set up MONUC on 30 November 1999, incorporating UN personnel authorized in earlier resolutions. Unfortunately this MONUC was led by the French. On their first mission outside their base in Ituri two French officers were killed. They refused to leave the city after that, even after Indian, Bangladeshi and Uruguayan peacekeepers joined them. 

Who is Laurent Nkunda?

Laurent Nkunda was born on 2 February 1967 in Rutshuru, North Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). He is married and has four children. He is a former psychology student has been a soldier since 1993. He first fought with the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the rebel movement formed by Rwandan Tutsi exiles, which took control of Rwanda in 1994, ending the genocide there. 

Afterwards Laurent Nkunda returned to the DRC and, in 1998, became senior officer in the Rwandan-backed Rally for Congolese Democracy-Goma (RCD-Goma), one of the main rebel groups fighting in DRC. In May 2002 Nkunda, together with General Amisi, was among the RCD-Goma officers responsible for the brutal repression of an attempted mutiny in Kisangani, where more than 160 persons were summarily executed. In one incident, forces under Nkunda's command bound, gagged, and executed twenty-eight persons and then put their bodies in bags weighed with stones to throw them off a Kisangani bridge. After the U.N. began investigating these crimes, Nkunda and several armed guards are alleged to have entered the U.N. premises where they abducted and beat two guards who would have been witnesses.

In 2003, when the war was meant to be over, the RCD joined the national army of the transitional government. In 2004 Nkunda was named general. Nkunda refused, however, to report to Kinshasa under the new integrated army and withdrew with hundreds of his former troops to the forests of Masisi in North Kivu. Despite the supposed end to the war, the soldiers still loyal to RCD-Goma clashed with other Congolese army forces in South Kivu in May 2004. Nkunda and troops loyal to him took control of the South Kivu town of Bukavu on 2 June, claiming this action was necessary to stop genocide local Banyamulenge. Some accused Nkunda of still following orders from Kigali, he however said that, although he considered Rwandans his allies, they had not told him to capture Bukavu. During the fighting, Nkunda's troops were seen to be carrying out war crimes, killing and raping civilians and looting their property.

After U.N. peacekeepers negotiated Nkunda's withdrawal from Bukavu, he and some of his forces headed into the forests of North Kivu while others, commanded by Col. Jules Mutebusi, found safety in Rwanda. In August 2005, Nkunda declared the current Congolese government corrupt and incompetent and called for its overthrow. In September 2005, another large number of Rwandaphone soldiers belonging to the former RCD-Goma deserted the national army in North Kivu and some of them went to join Nkunda in the forests of Masisi.

On 18 January 2006, rebel forces attacked and occupied several towns in Rutshuru territory, North Kivu province, after routing Congolese government soldiers stationed in the area. The rebels were said to be under the orders of Nkunda, an allegation confirmed by the provincial governor in a communiqué issued on 26 January. Local sources report that both rebel forces and Congolese army troops have raped and otherwise attacked civilians and looted their property. Tens of thousands of Congolese have fled to neighbouring areas or across the border to Uganda. 

General Laurent Nkunda sees himself as a guardian of the peace and the only man who can protect his Tutsi community. Others see him as a Rwandan stooge and the biggest reason why DR Congo is yet to benefit from landmark elections in 2006 intended to draw a line under decades of conflict and mismanagement. The government issued an international arrest warrant against him for alleged war crimes in 2005. Gen Nkunda says there is a "state of war" in eastern DR Congo and especially his home region of North Kivu. Up to a million people have fled three-way clashes between Gen Nkunda's forces, ethnic Hutu Rwandan rebels and the Congolese army over the last year. The 17,000 UN peacekeepers in the country have never tried to move against his force, aware that disarming so many troops would not be easy. 

What is the current situation?

The war continues. On the 10th of November 2008 Laurent Nkunda warned he would fight African peacekeepers if they were sent to back government troops in fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. A regional summit of African leaders said on the weekend that they would "not stand by" and watch the violence which has displaced about 250,000 people and led to UN accusations of war crimes over the systematic killing of civilians. The countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), including South Africa, Zimbabwe and Angola, agreed to send in "peacemaking forces" to the region of North Kivu "if and when necessary".

Nkunda, whose rebel forces sparked the current violence, said his troops would fight peacekeepers if they were deployed alongside Congolese government soldiers. Nkunda broadcast that “If SADC engages like this, they will have made a mistake. I am ready to fight them.” SADC called for an immediate ceasefire to allow humanitarian aid to get through. UN peacekeepers reported "heavy clashes" around Ngunda, about 40 miles (65km) north-west of the regional capital, Goma. The British government sent two planes carrying aid supplies to Goma, and said more would be dispatched later this week.

Over the weekend, Nkunda continued to consolidate his grip on the large areas of territory he has seized in recent weeks, including Kiwanja, where his forces killed scores, possibly hundreds, of civilians last week. The head of the UN peacekeeping mission in Congo, Alan Doss, condemned the "targeted killings of civilians by armed groups", principally Nkunda's forces, which murdered men, and some women, who remained in Kiwanja after the Tutsi rebels ordered everyone to leave. Doss accused the Mai Mai traditional militia of similar crimes against those it identified as supporters of Nkunda's National Congress for the Defence of the People (CNDP) but apparently not on the same scale. 

What is the Joseph Kabila Government doing?

The UN soldiers are doing very little as, other than hiding or travelling in force after guarantees of their safety are agreed in advance. They visit Nkunda but they don’t fight him. They are a triumph of military posturing.

The government of Joseph Kabila is doing less and his army making do with rape, pillage and the recruiting of chid militias. The resignation of Gizenga has sparked a new battle for power in Kinshasa.

The resignation of Prime Minister Antoine Gizenga Fundji on 25 September let loose a battle for succession. Gizenga’s departure was expected for months; he is 83, can work for only three hours a day, and his government has, to put it mildly, lacked dynamism. Since October 2007, the Prime Minister has been telling his intimates that he wanted to go. Some claimed the asking price was US$15 million, but he may not have been promised that much. Gizenga went on television to explain that, for all men, ‘even if the mind is hale and hearty, the physical body has limits that must be respected’.

Kabila was slow in accepting the r4esignation but the legislature has been busy with their own witch hunt. In July, it summoned several ministers and heads of state businesses to appear for questioning. The management of the Société Nationale d’Electricité (SNEL) was invited to explain why repairs to the Inga hydroelectric dam were taking so long – and why Kinshasa’s power supply was getting no better. The Hydrocarbons Minister, Lambert Mendé Omalanga, was criticised for handing out oil concesssions as they came along, instead of inviting tenders. September’s parliamentary session was expected to be stormy, especially since the government had not presented its 2009 budget, which is overdue. Joseph Kabila’s rival, Jean-Pierre Bemba, is in The Hague, awaiting trial by the International Criminal Court; the Secretary General of his Mouvement de Libération du Congo (MLC), François Mwamba, rightly described Gizenga’s departure as an ‘admission of failure’. Its failures are military, economic and social. As Gizenga resigned, teachers, hospital staff and state officials were striking for pay increases and the payment of arrears. Crime is rife in Kinshasa, and the war in Kivu is going badly.

 The biggest problem, however, is a useless army. There is open war again in North Kivu, on Congo-Kinshasa’s eastern border. From his twin bases of Masisi and Rutshuru, rebel Tutsi General Laurent Nkunda is resisting efforts to dislodge his Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple (CNDP) by the national army, the Forces Armées de la République Démocratique du Congo (FARDC), whose allies are the MaiMai militias of the Patriotes Résistants Congolais (Pareco) and the remnants of the former Rwandan Hutu government’s army, the Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Rwanda (FDLR).

The Mission des Nations Unies en République Démocratique du Congo (Monuc), reckons that the ceasefire signed in Goma in January has been broken on 304 occasions, with several hundred deaths and an extra 100,000 people driven from their homes. The district around Goma, near the border with Rwanda, is cut off for 30 kilometres around the town and little farming can be done there, according to the Pole Institute, a non-governmental agency with European and Congolese members. The government’s strategy is at best confused.

Its FARDC has five times as many soldiers as the CNDP. But when FARDC takes the offensive its troops are regularly beaten back by the CNDP, whose 4,000-5,000 fighting men are better disciplined and better equipped. The FARDC has often tried to involve UN troops in fighting Nkunda’s rebels; Monuc’s reluctance to take sides has prompted Congolese officials to muster civilians against the UN. On 3 September in Rutshuru, a UN armoured vehicle was set on fire. Monuc has been attacked elsewhere, with several peacekeepers injured by stone-throwers in September. But it insists on remaining neutral, declining to share responsibility for the FARDC’s defeats. On 9 September, it released a film about the government troops’ humiliation on the front near Nyanzale. Monuc’s insistence on trying to keep the belligerents apart infuriates the Kinshasa government, all the more so since Monuc blames the FARDC for breaking the ceasefire with its recent offensives.

The blame is directed to Kagame and Rwanda. In Goma, the government fosters racial hatred. Congo’s official television broadcast on 12 and 19 September featured programmes inciting ethnic hate against Rwandans (meaning the Tutsi rulers in Kigali). On 21 September, ‘spontaneous’ demonstrations by soldiers’ wives rapidly turned into looting and the destruction of houses thought to belong to Nkunda and his associates; the women went on to make prisoners of the Defence Minister, Tshikez Diemu, and the Governor of North Kivu, Julien Paluku.

 The government’s behaviour seems to make no sense. Since 2004 it has tried and failed to conquer Nkunda and his men; its offensives regularly fail, and it cannot get MONUC to do the work for it. Yet the rulers in Kinshasa persist. Several explanations are on offer. Some Congolese generals want to carry on with the war in order to justify the presence of their troops in the area, as cover for the looting of local people’s goods and their natural resources – activities that they share with the FDLR. The Pole Institute claims that in North Kivu the FDLR cooperates with ‘Colonel Sam’ of the government army to control a fat share, perhaps a third, of mining revenues, through an organised but unofficial taxation system. One alternative explanation is that the government revenues that pay for the war escape the International Monetary Fund’s usual controls, so President Kabila and his associates can get their hands on part of it.

 Finally, some South Kivu hardliners in Kabila’s team are keen to sort out Nkunda and all Tutsis, including Rwanda’s government, which is why the FARDC clearly collaborates with the Rwandan Hutus of the FDLR. This contravenes a hard-won agreement signed in Nairobi in November 2007, by which the government agreed to neutralise the FDLR. A report from the French Institute of International Relations suggests that the Kinshasa government’s aims are unlikely to be achieved Its author, Sébastien Melmot, criticises the policy of creating an army much of whose work is to develop farm production and build infrastructure.

 Its humiliating defeat in November 2007 by Nkunda’s small but efficient fighting units demonstrated the FARDC’s ‘total lack of professionalism’. Melmot points out that, instead of giving priority to restructuring and reform of the security services, the government first sent its troops in March 2007 to wipe out Jean-Pierre Bemba’s militia, then in September-December to fight Nkunda in North Kivu. The Ministry of Defence aimed to create a rapid reaction force of 12 battalions, without any administrative organisation. There is no intelligence agencies, military or civilian, are badly disorganised. Outside organisations do not help. The UN is neutral. The European Union is engaged in a competition for influence; in the quest for African favourites. Some members back Angola, others South Africa. China and the United States each run their own military assistance programmes, secretly and without reference to any other country’s – China delivering equipment, the USA offering training for parts of a rapid reaction force. Army units are disorganised, short of money and unbalanced by the reform process. The army’s own reformers try to limit the numbers in each unit, but the experts in charge of the official disarmament, demobilisation and retraining scheme push large numbers of men into units without acknowledging that the resources for training them are entirely inadequate.

The cost of army reform is a taboo subject. The number of troops is between 120,000 and 175,000, but no one is sure. Because the defence budget is not subject to the normal financial controls, there can be no genuine debate about it, says Melmot. The basic problem, he argues, is that the government wants to achieve everything at once – to fight, to support the civil power and to reform the armed forces. Foreign aid might pay for army reform, but it cannot buy the political will to carry out the reform. Senior officers are in any case against the EU’s main military assistance programme, called EUSEC. One of its proposals is to separate the chain of command from the chain of military payments; but it is the chain of payments that enriches the generals who control the chain of command.

 What is likely to happen?

 It is very likely that Nkunda will continue to expand his influence throughout the Kivus. The Angolans have some troops in East Kasai and are threatening to bring in more. However, Angola doesn’t want to do this on its own. It would like Zimbabwean and Namibian assistance again but Zimbabwe says it can’t afford to. The Angolans may pitch in and prepay the Zimbabweans to come but this is unlikely. The British have no one but the Boy Scouts left for military endeavours and the French and Belgians have tightened their belts. The US is in total disarray as everyone is ‘transitioning’; e.g, looking for work. Nothing rational has come out of Foggy Bottom for the last two months. Worse; Susan Rice, an Obama advisor, used to be in charge of US African policy and is a good friend to Kagame. All in all it is not a healthy forecast.

Robot  # 1 | 17.11.2008 08:31

Since the Nigerian 'do or die' ex-President is touring the area it might be a good time to have a look at what is going on in Kivu. ...Read the full article.

bob  # 2 | 17.11.2008 12:03

kabilla and nkunda et al have committed war crimes, yet you seem willing only to hang nkunda? fortunately for nkunda, he is a great soldier, perhaps the only Real general in black africa and he has his wits about him. if he survives the snake obj, then my respect for him will increase even more.

lumumba  # 3 | 17.11.2008 12:59

This is a continuation of the process of decolonization in the Congo and Central Africa as a whole. What is lacking is a political/intellectual approach to the whole issue. At the risk of sounding repititious, the arbitrariness of the creation of African nation-states is now being manifested in the Congo; as it had in other areas of the continent. No doubt, Congo is now being held together primarily as a cash cow for the war-lords parading as leaders. Joseph Kabila has his hands full in mining kick-backs with his friends in Arizona, US. My take is that we need a rethink of the entire nation-state scenario for Africa. This does not mean criminals and war mongers will be immediately eliminated, but it will create a different paradigm for our socio-economic and political future. It is not for nothing that the European powers are dilly-dallying on the crisis--the arms used in the war are definitely not manufactured in the Congo. So, the issue is cut out for us. There will not be peace in the DRC until a new geo-political structure is worked out. Whoever 'wins' now will only set the stage for another clash in the future. This is the time for the African intellectual elite to rise up and become politically involved to reshape and redefine the continent. As it is, we are already balkanized; reshaping the continent will recreate not more than 20 countries. And for the "do or die" UN emmisary, he should know that the Congo is not Sao Tome where he went and "commanded" the coup makers to desist lest they should face his wrath.

MrOneNaija  # 4 | 17.11.2008 14:34

PARALYSIS IN KINSHASA: ADIEU TO AMANI? An informative analysis! War criminals in the Laurent Nkunda mould enjoy apparent political relevance only to the extent that the central government remains burdened by its internal contradictions and failures. Nkunda and his CNDP claim to be fighting to protect his Tutsi ethnic group - the Banyamulenge - but what one sees are unpardonable atrocities against unarmed civilians on the part of a power-hungry monster. Another of Nkunda's unsavory demands is the violent overthrow of the elected government in Kinshasa, this, in obvious repudiation of the Amani ("peace" in Swahili) programme which has over the last few years led to relative stability in the country including its eastern region of Nord-kivu. For a while, prior to the recent initiation of hostilities by Nkunda, there were rumors about the man's death. Many Congolese are now probably sad that those rumors did turn out to be wild. What Joseph kabila needs to do, in the short term, is figure out how to get rid of Nkunda with minimal damage to the local populations. The UN should be convinced to declare Nkunda a dangerous man that he is. He should be captured and sent to the Hague to face justice like the other Congolese warlord called Mbemba, fils. Crucially, there should be a long-term strategy aimed at containing the Rwandan dictator who goes by the name of kagame. kagame has become a terrible threat to peace and stability in the sub-region. While playing on the international community's guilt reflexes regarding the Rwandan Genocide, Kagame has used direct military intervention in the RDC as well as local proxies like Nkunda to enrich himself and his associates. His cupidity and tribal revanchism must never be allowed to be insurmontable obstacles to peace in the RDC. As for Obasanjo's nauseating presence in the RDC, the UN should be reminded that its integrity is seriously called into question. The UN should not be in the business of futilely trying to reburnish the rotten image of a corrupt and sinister ex-tyrant whose numerous atrocities against Nigeria and its peoples have made the tin god a pariah in his own country. Only the likes of Yar'Adua and the spineless Ojo Madueke can propose Obasanjo as an international peace-maker. P.S. Readers who are literate in French are advised to also consult this interesting document: http://afrique.kongotimes.i...

akuluouno  # 5 | 18.11.2008 02:18

Lumumba and Mr One Naija, I say gbam to your interventions. I think to the gargantan historical and hummanitarian problems facing DRC has been added a man made disaster, hurricane obasanjo. It is like the devil going to negotiate for peace in hell. I am aware that Nkunda and Kabila are foxes enough to know that their UN Envoys antecedents is not worth an atom of legitimacy. No wonder massive fighting broke out the next day in the region with Kabila's Chief of Army Staff being shown the way out of office just yesterday. I think there is an international conspiracy to keep one of the potential great African states on its knees for sometime to come. For a long time, the west is aware that a peaceful and prosperous Congo will throw up that nuclear fission of rapid development in the heart of Africa. So they will not let that be. And who at this time will facilitate that death, Emperor Olusius Obasanjus, the Conqueror of Nigeria and by the grace of God, the Balogun of a destroyed DRC. Having read Bitter Sweet by Remi, I wonder why Ki Moon, Nkunda, a born-again Christian warrior General and Kabila another general concieved in the throes of war will believe the Founder of Modern Nigeria seeing that during the civil war, he was part of those that committed worse atrocities than Nkunda and Kabila combined together. May God have pity on Africa and Africans.:frown::frown:

Dreams  # 6 | 18.11.2008 06:48

Obasanjo might not be liked, but you need someone with his cunning skills, and knowlege of the Congo to bring an improvement to the situation there. From what I've read of General Nkunda, I doubt if he has the willingness or capacity to see the bigger picture for the region. Unfortunately, he is such a strong force in the area. To restore peace to the Congo, there is need to neutralize the influence of all these competing forces, and this could be done by a combination of diplomatic and military actions. I think that OBJ's trip to the region is just the first step.