A most bizarre thing happened a few weeks ago: the Tshisekedi administration played spoiler in efforts to restore peace and stability in the country it governs. This came after the latest rounds of Angola-brokered negotiations, which now appear to have reached an impasse.
The ministerial meetings in Luanda had identified the dismantling of the Rwandan genocidal group, the FDLR, as a key element in the search for peace in the DRC and the region. The meetings determined that Congo would provide a plan for the neutralization of the FDLR, following the implementation of which, Rwanda will then review its defense mechanisms. The military and intelligence chiefs of both countries were to draw up a plan to achieve this mission. The security chiefs of Angola, the DRC and Rwanda held a “secret” meeting to undertake this task and to plan operations against the FDLR. They reached an agreement.
Shortly afterwards, however, the DRC’s minister of foreign affairs opposed the planned operations, throwing his own military and intelligence chiefs under the bus. In other words, the DRC played spoiler in a process designed to restore its own peace and security.
Spoiler role
This was not the first time the DRC government was playing spoiler. In November 2022, the East African force under the command of Kenya deployed in North Kivu to provide a buffer between Congolese army, the FARDC, and the M23 rebels. Under the agreement, the buffer would allow for ceasefire and a negotiated political settlement. The M23 vacated much of the area it had occupied and handed the territory to the EAC troops. With the M23 retreated, tensions began to rise as Kinshasa demanded that EAC force finish them off. In a provocative move, the FARDC and various militias supporting the Congolese army even began to occupy some of the territory that the M23 had ceded to the EAC forces.
Meanwhile, in Arusha and Angola, Tshisekedi pushed at summits of heads of state to change the mandate of the EAC force from peacekeeping to offensive. The EAC balked. The heads of state, including Uganda’s Museveni and Kenya’s Ruto, were quick to rebuff Tshisekedi’s wishes, all of whom reminded Tshisekedi that the M23 had legitimate grievances that could only be resolved politically through negotiations. According to sources privy to the discussions, Museveni used himself as a reference point, saying that as a freedom fighter himself, he could identify with these grievances and that Tshisekedi should not come to him crying for help when “those boys”, as Museveni calls them, march on Kinshasa.
But all these interventions and warnings from the heads of state fell on deaf ears. Tshisekedi had promised to defeat the M23 and was unwilling to face the grim reality of the military setbacks suffered by the FARDC.
Tshisekedi’s strategy to achieve this elusive victory over the M23 is to recreate the conditions that led to the current conflict: get Rwanda to revise its defence mechanisms, which he believes are preventing him from defeating the rebels, and then go after the M23 with the same coalition that defeated them in 2013. Tshisekedi plans to do this without addressing the issue of the FDLR, a group he sees as a strategic ally in his openly stated project of regime change in Rwanda. Unsurprisingly, he has received strong support from the US, which, in total disregard of the Luanda process, has again issued a statement calling on Rwanda to review its defence strategy before the FDLR is neutralised. Obviously, both Kinshasa and Washington are blind to changing realities.
First, on the issue of the FDLR, Rwanda seems to have lost any trust it had in the Congolese government. Many peace agreements have been signed and promises to neutralise the FDLR once and for all have not been kept. To make matters worse, Kinshasa has publicly declared its intention to help the FDLR and other Rwandan terror groups achieve regime change. Tshisekedi himself has said that his army can strike Kigali without deploying troops on Rwandan soil. In May and June 2022, the FARDC shelled and fired rockets into Rwandan territory, injuring innocent civilians. In short, there are simply no incentives for Rwanda to compromise and imperil its security.
Second, the M23 has evolved. In 2012, it was a mutiny of Congolese soldiers who had barely had time to organise, arm and recruit. Apart from demanding respect for the peace agreement of 23 March 2009, the M23 as a movement had no clear political project. Today, it has solved all these challenges. Militarily, it can take on the Kinshasa coalition alone. Diplomatically, it has the understanding, if not the support, of regional leaders, many of whom are demanding that it be included in the peace process.
Both Kinshasa and Washington will have to come to terms with these realities and stop their spoiler tactics.
Negotiating with FDLR, the Kigali Doctrine
Kinshasa supporters also suggest that if the DRC is forced to negotiate with the M23, Rwanda should negotiate with the FDRL. But this is another spoiler tactic.
Consider this: the DRC was asked to negotiate with the M23 because the EAC leaders and the Angolan president assessed their cause and determined that it was a legitimate political grievance. Indeed, none of these leaders – not even Evariste Ndayishimiye of Burundi, Tshisekedi’s ally – has gone so far as to take the position that Rwanda should negotiate with the FDLR. This position is simply untenable.
The founding members of the FDLR committed genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Under the nose and often with the complicity of successive DRC governments, they have continued their genocidal project in Congo, driving hundreds of thousands of Tutsis out of the country, some of whom have now taken up arms under the name of M23 to defend their right to live in Congo. The FDLR’s founding principle is to complete this genocidal project “until no Tutsi remains in Rwanda” – and now in the DRC. How do you negotiate this demand, and since negotiation implies making concessions, what would be the appropriate concessions to make?
Clearly, the FDLR has no legitimate political grievances. Negotiations would mean making concessions on how many people should be sacrificed to satisfy the demand for Tutsi blood.
If the grievance is non-negotiable, its solution is through force, hence the military option. The alternative would be for the FDLR to denounce the ideology that seeks to wipe out a section of the population and to undergo rehabilitation, as others who have done so have returned and been reintegrated into Rwandan society. In the absence of such a process, however, it is only logical to draw on the FDLR’s own records and statements in order to derive the objectives for which the FDLR would negotiate.
In other words, until Rwanda is ready to sacrifice some of its people, the ideology of genocide will remain its red line, and the purveyors of that ideology, large or small, will be subjected to its “defensive measures” in some form, depending on the immediacy of the threat.
One can call this the Kigali Doctrine.
