GREAT LAKES: Threat of regionalisation hangs over Congolese conflict

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

NAIROBI, 3 Dec 2004 (IRIN) - Whether or not the Rwandan army actually has invaded, or will invade, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as Rwandan President Paul Kagame said on 24 November it would, remains unclear, but the question may be immaterial.

"What is important is that the [rebel] RCD still controls the east," Claude Kabemba, an analyst on the Great Lakes region for the Electoral Institute of Southern Africa, told IRIN on Friday.

The Rassemblement congolais pour la démocratie (RCD) joined the coalition government in Kinshasa following an agreement reached in April 2003, but "its true allegiance is to Rwanda," Kabemba said. His writings on the region include a forthcoming chapter in a book on the DRC published by Wits University Press called "Big Dysfunctional State".

RCD leader Azarias Ruberwa, one of the four vice-presidents in the transitional government in Kinshasa, said on Radio France International on Wednesday that if Rwanda had indeed invaded eastern Congo, he would "condemn it".

However, Ruberwa, a Congolese Tutsi, also said that Hutu militias based in eastern Congo, the hardcore of whom were responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, were being armed by unknown forces and that the Congolese army and international community were not doing enough to stop it. Various countries have called for the UN Mission in the DRC, known as MONUC, to be given authority to disarm the militias by force, but that action had not yet been taken.

"As long as the UN and other countries fail to disarm these [militias], it is [left] upon us to do it," Kagame told the Rwandan Senate this week.

His statement spurred fears of an invasion with conflicting reports as to whether it had happened. A MONUC spokeswoman reported the sighting of 100 troops who appeared to be Rwandan and UN Radio Okapi quoted the deputy commander of Congo's 8th Military Region, Col Alfred Bindu, as confirming fighting at Walikale in North Kivu Province.

However, Radio Okapi also quoted MONUC as saying that the presence of Rwandan troops could not be confirmed and Kagame's adviser on the Great Lakes region, Richard Sezibera, said at a news conference on Thursday that "all sightings" of Rwandan troops in the Congo were false.

Whether or not the invasion has happened, Kagame's critics say he is using the issue of disarming the militias in eastern Congo as a pretext to re-enter the country.

Monsignor Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya, a top figure of the African Roman Catholic Church, is quoted by the Italian Missionary News Service Agency as saying that Rwanda did not "manage to resolve the problem of the Interahamwe [Rwandan Hutu militia]" during the recent war in the Congo, when Rwanda controlled much of the east.

"Why should they succeed now?" he said.

According to Kabembe the militias are, in fact, "an important political tool" for the DRC and Rwandan governments.

"The Kinshasa government uses the militias to limit the ability of Rwanda to control its territory in the east, while for Rwanda, the presence of the militias gives it a reason to remain a power in the region," he said.

Kabembe does not exclude the possibility that Kagame is bluffing and that he has not invaded and does not intent to.

"He already has a [proxy] force in the DRC with the RCD," Kabembe said. "Kagame's aim may be to ensure Rwanda remains a force in the region. That's why Rwanda intervenes every time things start to improve in the DRC."

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