DR Congo: Are M23 withdrawing ?

New Vision ( Uganda ) reports

Congo rebels leaving Goma, Sake

By Anne Mugisa

The UN and African Union have approved a 4,000-strong hybrid neutral military force to be stationed in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The new development comes even as the DRC rebel group M23 pulls out of two towns captured from the government troops recently, following a deal brokered by Uganda in a flurry of diplomatic activity.

Besides Goma, the rebels had also seized Sake, a strategic town on the way to South Kivu province and its capital Bukavu.

Kenya, Tanzania, Angola and DR Congo were last I heard the contributing nations with the force under Tanzanian leadership. The size of the force seems to have grown from the 2000 mooted in September.

The force under the UN mandate will keep peace but also engage in combat if any groups decided to destabilise the area, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. A UN military envoy is on the way to Kampala for consultations to ensure that “the concept is understood.,” according to the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador James Mugume.

Currently, the UN peacekeeping mission (MONUSCO) in Congo is made up of 20,000 troops, but its mandate has purely been to protect civilians and not to fight. This is because the contributing countries insist that their forces should not engage in combat.

That is a significant change to the mandate.
This, however, is set to change with the proposed hybrid force. The current MONUSCO force is to be reduced to 16,000 and beefed up with the 4,000 African Union forces which could engage in combat if need be.

According to Mugume, the two-mandate hybrid force will also tackle anybody else who will try to destabilise peacein the region. Several armed groups are operating in the Eastern DRC. They include the Mai-Mai and the FDLR (Interahamwe).

Mugume said several African countries have pledged to contribute the forces and the UN has approved about $150m for that hybrid mission for the first year and would be revised after the first year as need arises. The money is part of the $1.4b approved by the UN for MONUSCO.

Mugume said that deployment will depend on how fast the African countries contributed troops but added that “we could deploy by January if all goes well”.

That leaves a small two month window and a considerable power vacuum.
The M23 military commander, Sultani Makenga, said on Tuesday the M23 had begun transferring arms, provisions and medical supplies from Goma to the Rutshuru territory north of the city, an area along the Uganda and Rwanda border that has been their main stronghold since launching their uprising in April,

The Kinshasha government yesterday alleged that during the withdrawal, the M23 were engaged in massive looting of Goma

Which is standard practice across the region FARDC did the same when they surrendered Goma.
The Red Cross also reported that it had buried 62 people whose bodies were found on the streets of Goma in the days following its capture by the M23 group.

Residents said dozens of trucks carrying food and ammunition had left Goma, the main city in the Kivu region on the borders of Rwanda and Uganda which has been the flashpoint for past wars in central Africa’s largest country.

That tends to support the M23 withdrawal from Goma.
At stake is the control of Kivu’s vast mineral wealth, which  include cobalt, copper, diamonds, gold and coltan, a key component in mobile phones.

On the streets of Goma, life appeared to be returning to normal, AFP correspondents said. Shops were open, taxis were running and while there were a few rebels posted at junctions, their presence has been scaled down considerably.

A local official said residents had reported that the trucks were heading towards Rutshuru and Rumangabo, both rebel-held towns north of Goma. But the M23 were still occupying the town of Sake, which lies on the road towards Bukavu.

Bloomberg reports

“Our troops will gather tomorrow in Sake and they will continue their withdrawal,” rebel spokesman Colonel Vianney Kazarama said in an interview in Goma. Kazarama said the city’s residents would be at risk of attack from poorly paid government soldiers once they returned.

And

Congo’s armed forces are massing in Minova and ready to fight, Lieutenant-General Francois Olenga, interim head of the nation’s ground forces, told reporters on the outskirts of the town, which is about 50 kilometers (31 miles) by road from Goma. There was no immediate sign the insurgents were pulling out of Goma, the capital of Congo’s North Kivu province.

“We are preparing for war,” Olenga said. “There will be no more negotiations after negotiations. Now it’s war that will bring peace.”

The rebels had made a string of demands on the Kinshasa government as a prerequisite for their withdrawal.

Among them was the release of opposition standard-bearer Etienne Tshisekedi, a former prime minister, who has been under unofficial house arrest since declaring victory in flawed elections last year that were officially won by Kabila. They also demanded direct talks with the president and the dissolution of the electoral commission.

The revolt against the DRC government has raised the risk of all-out war in a region dogged by nearly two decades of conflict that has killed about five million people.

The rebellion erupted in April when the M23 mutinied and broke away from the DR Congo army, complaining that a 2009 deal to end a previous conflict had not been fully implemented. The rebels captured Goma on November 20 after Congolese soldiers withdrew.

The next 36 hours should be interesting.

DR Congo Crimes against humanity

All Africa reports

Congo-Kinshasa: 'The Children Could Die' in Eastern DRC Fighting

Bukavu — Humanitarian agencies working in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been overwhelmed following a massive displacement triggered by fighting between the Congolese army (FARDC) and rebel movement M23 in North Kivu.

"The situation is truly precarious. There is no medicine, no food. Children could die. People are spending the night outside, each one beside their baggage, and it is very cold," says Roger Manegabe, head of a family who managed to reach Bukavu from North Kivu.

The sad truth is children will die and they will die pointlessly. There is another name for that murder. It is also a crime against humanity.

"We're missing school. We're hungry, there's no drinking water, there's no electricity. I'm 16 years old and war is all I've known from the time I was born. What will become of us?" said Fiston, Manegabe's son.

Since the start of the year, conflict in the two Kivu provinces -- militias in South Kivu have also clashed -- has exacerbated an already dire humanitarian situation and uprooted nearly 650,000 people, according to U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Adrian Edwards.

And one must ask for what. Nothing more it would appear other than the continuing instability of the region that prevents development, the rule of law but allows for the illegal appropriation and exploitation of the regions mineral wealth. 

Manegaba's family is among some 250,000 civilians newly displaced since April in North Kivu, and a further 339,000 in South Kivu. According to Edwards, during this period more than 40,000 people also fled to Uganda and 15,000 others to Rwanda. And since August, Burundi has received nearly 1,000 new Congolese refugees.

Rebel fighters captured Goma, the province's largest city, on Nov. 20, and Sake the following day, before their advance stalled.

Yet even that pointless piece of adventurism created thousands more refugees. 

M23 was launched on Mar. 12 with a mutiny of Congolese army officers and soldiers. It is now putting forward a broad set of demands covering politics, social issues, human rights and governance. The movement is demanding direct talks with Congolese President Joseph Kabila as a precondition for retreating from Goma.

The group's political spokesperson, Jean-Marie Runiga Lugerero, held a preliminary meeting on Sunday Nov. 25 with Kabila in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, following a regional summit on the crisis in eastern DRC.

More than 30,000 people who fled the Kanyaruchinya sector in North Kivu have found refuge at a camp in Mugunga, swelling the total numbers there to 40,000. They told the UNHCR representative in the province, Lazard-Etienne Kouassi, who visited the camp on Nov. 22, that they had not received food since their arrival and that they were eager to go back to their villages.

To what though ? It would appear that there has been considerable looting.

DR Congo: Kinshasa's Sake stupidity

The Irish Times reports

Congo rebels advance after beating off attack

Congolese rebels advancing near Sake in eastern Congo yesterday. Fighters widely thought to be backed by Rwanda met no resistance as they moved south. photograph: James Akena

Rebels in eastern Congo pushed south along Lake Kivu yesterday after repelling a counterattack by government forces near the new rebel stronghold in the city of Goma on the Rwandan border.

Others moved north from the strategic road junction at Sake.

The rebels were in control of Sake after a battle on Thursday that was the first sign of a government fightback. The army had abandoned Goma on Tuesday to the M23 movement, widely thought to be backed by Rwanda.

I was concerned at the optimism that was on the blogs regarding the fight back for Sake. M23 were always fighting this part of the rebellion from a position of strength after the capitulation of the UN forces.

Local people and fighters said Congolese troops and allied militia had pulled back from Sake – which lies 20km west from Goma along the lake – to Minova, 15km farther south along the main highway in the direction of M23’s stated next objective, the city of Bukavu at the southern tip of the lake.

The rebel group said after taking Goma it would march on the capital, Kinshasa, 1,600km away, to defeat President Joseph Kabila. The fighters met no resistance as they probed several miles south from Sake yesterday.

Bukavu will be a be a critical battle for the Congolese Army and anti M23 militias. Should M23 however win I don't think that they will be able to move much further. Kinshasa is a pipe dream at this stage. The other stated objective is Kisangani   and I am of the opinion that this would be a step to far for M23 at this stage. To have achieved it it would have needed to carry on with its blitzkrieg style sweep all away assault. The momentum whilst not lost has been checked. For this Kanshasa can thank only M23 ineptitude  inexperience and lack of human resourses.   

Thousands of refugees fled the fighting, heading for Goma, where aid agencies have a significant presence. United Nations peacekeepers stood back when the rebels moved in. Another town, Mushaki, in the hills 20km to the northwest of Sake, also fell to the rebels after overnight fighting, according to officials in Goma who were in touch with people in the area.

Mushaki would seem to be a step on the road to Kisangani. There is also a major road connecting Bukavu and Kisangani. How useful it is I can't say. It was passable in about in11.5 hours last year the distance is 853 km. That suggests however it was in reasonable shape then.
  Previous uprisings in Democratic Republic of Congo, among them one led by Mr Kabila’s father, have been launched from the area, where a mix of colonial-era borders, rich mineral deposits and ethnic rivalries has caused two decades of turmoil, dating from the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, that have cost millions of deaths.

I think that two decades of death rather understates the case. Lets start with King Leopold II of Belgium in the 1880's and move forward from there.

On the outskirts of Sake, taken by the rebels on Wednesday, three bodies in the uniform of Mr Kabila’s national army lay by the roadside. Cartridges cases littered the area.

" Mr Kabila's "  not President Kabila's... I am not sure if I should draw an inference from that or not. It is hard to know if the contempt with which the people of the Congo hold Kabila is starting to filter through to the international main stream media. That observation should not be interpreted as support existing for M23. 

“There was heavy fighting,” said pastor Jean Kambale, who dismissed a government claim that it had retaken Sake on Thursday. “It’s M23 who control the town,” he said. “They never lost it.”

I am seriously starting to doubt that there was any government sanctioned attempt to retake Sake by FARDC an attempt by local militias and FARDC soldiers seems far more plausable. At this stage  Kinshasa  looks  to be " Clutching at staws... still drowning" to quote Fish.  Pastor Jean Kambale unintentionally raises valid questions about the Congolese governments ability to even gather simple intellegence.

Mixed welcome 

The rebels received a mixed welcome in areas taken this week. Fearing more fighting, thousands of people clutching children and belongings were on the move around the lake yesterday, trudging along the road towards Goma from Sake.

The rebels received the only welcome possible from those who chose to remain. Gratitude for not killing them don't confuse that with a welcome of any meaning.

The rest of the article is history with a bit of geography thrown in.

M23 was formed in April by army mutineers who accused Mr Kabila of reneging on a peace deal from an earlier conflict. It says it plans to “liberate” the country and has rejected a call from regional states to withdraw from Goma.

The conflict has raised tensions between Congo and its tiny but militarily powerful neighbour Rwanda, which Kinshasa, backed by UN experts, accuses of secretly backing rebels.

Rwanda’s history of meddling 

Rwanda has a history of meddling in Congo’s conflicts, which have resulted in the death of some five million people since 1998. Rwandan president Paul Kagame has denied the charge repeatedly and blames Congo and world powers of seeking a scapegoat for their failure.

Minova was the Congolese army’s rallying point after its retreat from Goma, according to the rebels. Having fended off the counterattack on Sake, they would take a step towards fulfilling their stated ambition of taking Bukavu by seizing Minova.

The capital of South Kivu province, Minova lies at the opposite end of Lake Kivu, 100km from Goma, the capital of North Kivu. Mr Kabila’s forces are on the back foot as the M23 fighters press south. Analysts remain sceptical, however, that the rebels can make good on their threat to march on Kinshasa in the west without significant and overt support from foreign backers. In pushing north from Sake, the insurgents moved closer to Kichanga, home of Bosco Ntaganda, a Rwandan-born warlord wanted for war crimes by the international court at The Hague. According to many observers, Ntaganda is controlling the insurgency.

Competition for resources 

Regional and international leaders are scrambling to halt the latest bout of violence in a Great Lakes region long been plagued by ethnic and political conflict fuelled by competition for reserves of gold, tin and coltan, an ore of rare metals used in electronics and other high-value products. The rebels have so far ignored international calls to withdraw from occupied areas. They doubt Mr Kabila’s stated readiness to look into their complaints, saying they have already waited months for talks.

Regional leaders are due to hold crisis talks today in Kampala, capital of neighbouring Uganda.

A Congolese government spokesman confirmed Mr Kabila was back in Kinshasa following inconclusive talks with Mr Kagame this week. The spokesman said Mr Kabila would return to Uganda today. – (Reuters)

DR Congo: Goma Sake and lives ruined

The Star Online

Congo army fights back, rebels hold Goma

SAKE/GOMA, Democratic Republic of Congo (Reuters) - Congolese troops fought back on Thursday against rebels who rejected calls from African leaders to quit the eastern city of Goma, captured earlier this week in a major upset and despite the presence of U.N. peacekeepers.

Thousands of people fled the area of clashes around the town of Sake, as M23 rebel fighters rushed from Goma to reinforce their positions against an army counter-offensive.

Phil Moore / AFP - Getty Images

Thousands of Congolese flee the town of Sake, about 16 miles west of Goma, following fresh fighting in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nov. 22

The problem with this story is that every news outlet seems to be relying on the same report. The earliest I have seen is the guardian version but I suspect they are all using the Reuters feed.

Both sides claimed control of Sake as night fell on the troubled eastern area. There was no independent verification of who was holding the town.
The M23 rebel movement, widely believed to be backed by Rwanda, has vowed to "liberate" all of the vast, resource-rich country after taking Goma, a provincial capital on the Rwandan border, ramping up tensions in a fragile region.

So at the moment we are involved in speculation. To me it seems unlikely that the FARDC forces have regrouped. The humiliation that was Goma must be demoralising.

Phil Moore / AFP - Getty Images

Congolese children sit on a step in front of M23 rebels in Sake, Nov. 22, 2012. Rebels took the town yesterday, but were engaged in heavy gunfighting this afternoon as government-allied militia tried to retake it.

With Congo struggling to regroup its fractured army, President Joseph Kabila suspended the head of ground forces following allegations levelled by a United Nations panel of experts that he sold weapons to other armed groups in the east.

"The head of state decided to immediately suspend General Major Gabriel Amisi due to an inquiry. Other officers of lower ranks will also be investigated by the army," Information Minister Lambert Mende said.

Timing is everything. This has shades of the decision making process that seemed to occur in Hitlers bunker as the allies closed in. I guess if the army would rather investigate than fight then Sake may remain in M23 hands.

The head of M23's political arm, Jean-Marie Runiga, said the rebels would not retreat despite the call to do so from governments in central Africa, preferring to hold their ground until Kabila opens direct talks with them.
"We'll stay in Goma waiting for negotiations," Runiga told Reuters in the city. "They're going to attack us and we're going to defend ourselves and keep on advancing."

Runiga flew to Uganda on Thursday for three days of talks with President Yoweri Museveni, who is acting as an intermediary for negotiations, a Ugandan presidential source said.

What is the end game ? I suspect a return to the status quo from a Rwandan perspective. 

Rebel fighters seized Goma, a sprawling lakeside city of a million people, on Tuesday after government soldiers retreated and U.N. peacekeepers gave up trying to defend it.

The next day the rebels moved unopposed into Sake, about 25 km (15 miles) west along the main road. It was there that government troops and allied militia were hitting back in fighting that flared up late on Wednesday.

M23 rebels run toward Sake, Congo, as thousands of residents flee fresh fighting in the town on Thursday.Photograph by: Getty Images, The Associated Press

Alex Engwete quotes a guardian journalist as saying that FARDC have changed tactics also Alex offers some insight on the standing down of Amisi.

" It now seems that the latest change of tactics by the FARDC includes
resorting to counter-guerrilla combats with smaller units as well as
ganging up with local patriotic self-defense militias known as
"Mai-Mai."

Regional and international leaders have been scrambling to halt the fresh conflagration in the Great Lakes, a region of many colonial-era frontiers and long a tinderbox of ethnic and political conflict, with rich mineral deposits as the spoil.

On Wednesday, foreign ministers of the Great Lakes states demanded the rebels leave Goma and halt their advance. Kabila - in a concession to the rebels that fell short of opening talks - promised to look into their grievances.

"I'm not confident, because I've already waited for three months in Kampala for talks," Runiga said of a recent stay in the Ugandan capital, before travelling there again.

He said M23 wanted aid groups to return to Goma, after they evacuated during the fighting. Reuters correspondents saw aid workers driving in the city on Thursday.

The rebellion has triggered anti-government protests in Kinshasa and other parts of the country. On Thursday opposition figures seized on it to criticise Kabila's rule.

"Kabila is responsible for the suffering of the Congolese in Goma and in North Kivu. His leadership is weak," Bruno Mavungu, Secretary General of the UDPS party led by top opposition politician Etienne Tshisekedi, who says he is the rightful winner of a 2011 poll that handed Kabila a second term.

RENEWED CLASHES

Thousands of residents fled Sake on Thursday, a Reuters correspondent there said. Several truckloads of M23 fighters sped toward Sake from Goma as fighting raged in the afternoon.

Information Minister Mende said late on Thursday the army had wrested back control from the rebels, but a spokesman for M23 denied it had lost the town "Sake and its surroundings are in the hands of M23. That's a provocation," Vianney Kazarama told Reuters.

OCHA, the U.N.'s humanitarian coordination office, said about 140,000 people were now displaced in and around Goma as a result of fighting. It said power had to be restored to the town to avoid an outbreak of cholera.
M23 takes its name from a peace deal, signed on March 23, 2009, that was meant to bring former rebels into the national army, but which the group says the government has violated.

(Additional reporting by Bienvenu-Marie Bakumanya in Kinshasa; Writing by Richard Valdmanis; Editing by David Lewis and Michael Roddy)