Africa-Press – Rwanda. The April 23 joint announcement by the Congolese government and the AFC/M23 rebellion, under the aegis of Qatar, “constitutes an important – even decisive – step towards lasting peace” in the east of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, “provided that it is implemented in good faith,” according to Rwanda’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, Amb. Olivier Nduhungirehe.
Posting on X, the minister, added: “This momentum for peace in the region includes other initiatives underway in this month of April 2025, in which Rwanda is fully engaged.”
The Congolese government and the rebels agreed to an immediate cessation of hostilities in eastern DR Congo after their negotiators met in Qatar in the first direct peace talks in more than three years.
The Qatar-mediated negotiations, ongoing since at least April 10, were held “in a spirit of mutual understanding and a shared commitment to resolving the conflict through peaceful means,” according to a joint statement released on Wednesday.
As the joint statement indicated, after frank and constructive discussions, the representatives of both parties “agreed to work towards concluding a truce that would contribute to the effectiveness of the ceasefire.”
“By mutual agreement, both parties reaffirm their commitment to an immediate cessation of hostilities, a categorical rejection of any hate speech, intimidation, and call on all local communities to uphold these commitments.”
Address root causes of ongoing crisis
The negotiators agreed to immediately respect these commitments throughout the period of the talks and until their conclusion. Dialogue between the two parties, it is noted, will “address the root causes of the ongoing crisis” as well as the modalities for ending the conflict in the east of the country.
The war between the Congolese government army coalition that includes UN forces, a Rwandan genocidal militia known as FDLR, over 10,000 Burundian troops, over 1,600 European mercenaries, and the South Africa-led SADC mission (SAMIDRC), at first against M23 rebels, started in 2021 before the rebels joined more than 10 other opposition groups to form a larger force, Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC), in December 2023.
The AFC is led by Corneille Nangaa, the former chairman of the Congolese national electoral commission that oversaw elections in the country and certified President Felix Tshisekedi as the winner of the contested 2018 general election. The former election-chief-turned-rebel-leader is now coordinating a growing coalition of Congolese politicians – reported to have been joined by former President Joseph Kabila as well – and rebel groups fighting to oust Tshisekedi.
The conflict in eastern DR Congo was not started by Rwanda, “and we will not accept to bear the burden of” the DR Congo’s governance and security failures, foreign minister Amb Olivier Nduhungirehe pointed out, on March 10, when meeting Kaja Kallas, the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. At the time, Nduhungirehe reiterated that “Rwanda’s national security concerns have long been ignored or dismissed, despite the existential threat” from the DR Congo-backed “FDLR genocidal militia and hostile military forces allied with the Congolese army that were active in our border area.”
FDLR is a DR Congo-based terrorist militia founded by remnants of the masterminds of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
The security challenges posed by the genocidal militia and its splinter groups are “of very serious concern for Rwanda” especially since it has always tried to forcefully return to the country and genocidal agenda.
Kinshasa has persistently accused Kigali of backing M23 rebels. But the Rwandan government maintained that M23’s resurgence, about five years ago – after nearly 10 years of inactivity – was rooted in historical persecution, and not Rwanda’s “backing” as Kinshasa would like the world to believe.
Kigali set up defensive measures along the border to counter security threats from neighbouring DR Congo, and insists that they will remain in place so as to prevent any spillover and respond appropriately, whenever necessary, until agreements to neutralise the genocidal militia are effectively implemented.
When the Rwanda Patriotic Army rebels took over power and stopped the genocide, in July 1994, the ousted genocidal regime’s army (ex-FAR), politicians, and Interahamwe militia that had massacred more than one million people in 100 days – runaway, en masse, with their weapons, to eastern DR Congo, then known as Zaire.
They first banded together into what they called RDR, then PALIR, then ALIR I followed by ALIR II, and finally FDLR. In mid 2000, soon after the US government listed it as a terrorist organization following its murder of American tourists in Uganda’s Bwindi Forest, they formed FDLR so as to evade or distance themselves from their horrendous crimes. The initiators gathered in Lubumbashi, DR Congo’s second-largest city in the southeasternmost part, along the border with Zambia, and formed FDLR.
In eastern DR Congo, the genocidal militia continued its genocidal agenda, especially targeting the Kinyarwanda-speaking Congolese whose unresolved grievances resulted into the existence of the M23 rebellion.
The latter was created on May 6, 2012, due to numerous failures of the Congolese government, including Kinshasa’s refusal to implement a peace agreement signed on March 23, 2009.
In January 2009, a former politico-military group formed about three years earlier, the Congrès national pour la défense du people (CNDP), had stopped rebellion after Kinshasa promised to, among others, integrate its fighters into the national army. Top government officials including the then defense minister Charles Mwando Simba – who passed away, in Belgium, in December 2016 – attended a ceremony held at Rumangabo military camp, about 45 kilometres north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu Province, to welcome the first group of rebel fighters into the national army.
A few days later, CNDP officials announced the “the de facto transformation of CNDP into a political party” recognized by the government –after their fighter’s integration into the national army. But about 11 months after denouncing rebellion and becoming a political party, everything was back to ground zero. A frustrated head of the ex- rebel group-turned political party, Désiré Kamanzi, resigned.
Belgian minister announces regional tour
Belgian foreign minister Maxime Prévot is, on Friday, set to tour the Great Lakes region – visiting Uganda, Burundi and DR Congo, but not Rwanda which severed diplomatic ties with Belgium last month. As explained, Belgium has consistently undermined Kigali, “both well before and during the ongoing conflict in DR Congo, “in which Belgium has a deep and violent historical role, especially in acting against Rwanda.”
Prévot posted on X saying he welcomed the agreement announced by the Congolese government and the rebels “to work towards a truce and ceasefire leading to dialogue to restore lasting peace” in eastern DR Congo. He added: “I will travel to the region starting this Friday and express my full support for these efforts facilitated by Qatar and those of the regional organisations EAC/SADC.”
Alain Destexhe, a former Belgian senator who has openly criticized the Belgian government’s stance on the DR Congo conflict and the European country’s campaign against Kigali, responded to Prévot’s post, highlighting that Brussels has taken sides with Kinshasa, thereby “depriving you [Prévot] of the possibility of playing any role in the conflict.”
Last month, Destexhe said the Belgian foreign minister had been leading an aggressive campaign on behalf of his government to influence the position of the European Union and international organizations in a direction that is hostile to Rwanda.
“Belgium should have stayed out of regional conflicts and maintained strict neutrality,” he said of the European country’s alignment with the Congolese government’s allegations that Rwanda supported AFC/M23 rebels.
“Never before had Belgium adopted such an offensive stance on any issue since 1994.”
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