International Development Committee - UK Aid to RwandaWritten evidence submitted by Andrew Wallis

Summary

1. This submission takes into account a brief history and objectives of M-23 and its importance within wider security and social difficulties in DRC. It focuses on the need for an independent verification by the UK of any role Rwanda may have played in assisting M-23, given the context of the GoE report; and looks more widely at the relationship between the DRC government and other armed militia, specifically the FDLR.

Any short-term solution cannot be achieved by military means alone and the UK needs to play a part pressing for immediate meaningful talks between the combatants—the DRC government and the M-23, and for the possible restoration and implementation of the 2009 peace agreement. Further, if such a conflict is not to reoccur there has to be far reaching long term change within security forces and civil society.

The UK needs to play a positive part not by threatening development aid reduction but supporting constructive initiatives by the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), and further political dialogue. In this role, with its strong relationship with Rwanda and several governments in the Great Lakes Region, it is in an excellent position to play a leading and beneficial part in pushing for a meaningful and lasting peace and the necessary reforms to address current long-standing antagonisms and resentments.

The loss of development aid to Rwanda will not solve the M-23 revolt, runs the risk of seemingly “punishing” Rwanda—despite the UK not independently verifying allegations by making its own findings on the issue—and practically will hit hardest those targeted by the aid.

Author Introduction

2. Dr. Andrew Wallis is a research associate at the University of Cambridge Faculty of POLIS.ⁱ He has been involved in detailed research and travel in Rwanda and the Great Lakes for the past 15 years. Besides academic research projects he has written for various international media including the BBC, Al Jazeera, broadsheets in the UK, USA and Africa and is a regular contributor to opendemocracy.net. He is the author of “Silent Accomplice: the untold story of the role of France in the Rwandan genocide,” 2006, i.b.tauris.

Present and Future Aid to Rwanda

3. The M-23, [Congolese Revolutionary Army, CRA] is a militia of currently around 1,000 men, and without doubt a source of conflict the eastern DRC. However it is important to be aware of both the history of this movement and its wider impact and significance in the region and to escape from some western media portrays that have currently distorted the situation for their own political reasons.

4. M-23 claims to represent discontented former members of the CNDP and the Banymulenge. It aims specifically to get the government of President Joseph Kabila to respect the peace agreement of 23 March 2009, and to bring an end to both the FDLR and alleged security outrages by the national army, the FARDC. M-23 is significant, not just because its relatively few fighters have so far managed to take control of a significant area of the Kivus, but because it focuses attention on long term intrinsic problems in the area.

Most notable is the issue to the place in DRC society of the Banyamulenge. This group which has lived in the eastern DRC for more than 100 years, has in the past fifty years been the subject of numerous attacks; physically from other tribal groups and militia such as FDLR and national states forces (FARDC); also the loss of land rights and citizenship and with it both a political voice and an ability to live off the land. Without a resolution to these issues that gives them security from attack and an end to political prejudice in Kinshasa it is likely any end to the M-23 situation will only be short term before another armed insurrection takes its place. In sum, M-23, is the direct successor of Laurent Nkunda’s uprising, with a similar set of objectives.

International Response

5. The response of the International Community—the UN and individual states including the UK—to the M-23 situation has been limited and has failed to encourage the political dialogue needed for a resolution. Moreover, the contribution of the UN has been partial and far from helpful. The report by the UN Group of Expert’s has only encouraged regional antagonism, rather than providing an objective, methodolically secure and far reaching analysis that is needed. It has been used as a political tool with which to attack the Rwandan government, rather than to provide the necessary independent information and analysis that was its remit. The constant, almost monthly leaking of the report and its various amendments and appendices for obvious political reasons, and the staunchly anti-Rwandan government views of the GoE lead researcher, Steve Hege, should be a cause for concern in such a sensitive and much relied-upon document.

6. The UN and UK have attempted to press the leaders of Rwanda and DRC into talks. However, the major need is for pressure for meaningful talks to take place between M-23 and Kinshasa—something the DRC government has so far publicly refused to accept. A stand-alone military solution to the M-23 situation is unlikely.

7. The sudden influx of tens of thousands of genocidaire into the Kivus in 1994 seriously destabilized the area, and caused immense security issues, not just for the Banyamulenge, but for other indigenous tribal groups. The Rwandan state in the post genocide years has been threatened with periodic murderous incursions of Hutu extremist groups such as the ALiR and FDLR. In the years post1994 these extremist groups have, at times, been used by the DRC government and its armed forces, the FARDC, for their own political reasons.

8. For the Rwandan government, restoring internal and external security has been the number one priority since 1994. It has made it clear it does not accept having armed groups on its border that have the freedom to put into practice their open intent to attack and destabilize Rwanda, its citizens and its current government. Besides having to deal with this threat, Rwanda is faced with having a large number of its historic former citizens, the Banyamulenge, and the wider Banyarwanda community, who have lived across the border in the Kivus, threatened with land eviction, violence, sexual molestation and political emasculation. Refugee camps already exist inside Rwanda of those DRC citizens and non-citizens of original Rwandan extraction, who have fled ethnically-based violence directed against them in their DRC homeland.

9. The Rwandan government has publicly made it clear it does not support M-23 but that it remains supportive of efforts to obtain for the Banyamulenge and wider community the civil and human rights that should be the entitlement of all DRC citizens. It has been equally clear that the continued presence of the FDLR, which has continued its own murderous agenda during this summerⁱⁱ (see the report by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillar on 30 August) gives justification to the M-23 that they are defending their own community. Further it has played a leading role in the 11-member International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) talks, chaired by President Museveni, that seek a solution to the crisis.

10. The International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) has through the summer produced some meaningful responses to the crisis. This has included setting up a Joint Verification Group tasked with monitoring borders to stop the flow of weapons or recruits to the militias. It is also seeking to put into the field an international African force that would target all the militia groups in the Kivus—a vital part of restoring security to the region. The UK government should be fully supportive of the efforts by the ICGLR to allow this international force to move forward with its plans as it offers, at present, the only meaningful action.

Finding a Solution

11. The UK government has focused on the alleged Rwandan government support for the M-23. However any solution to M-23 has to take account of FDLR, whose long-term destabilization and violent campaign in the Kivus has exacerbated the formation of militia such as M-23, Raïa Mutomboki and the CNDP.

In the view of this author simply taking M-23 out of the picture is not, in itself, a solution to the problems faced by the people of the Kivus or indeed the DRC. The UK government needs to press for long term solutions (see International Alert, Ending the deadlock: Towards a new vision of peace in eastern DRC).ⁱⁱⁱ

M-23 may be politically useful for a number of politicians in Kinshasa and media groups that have used it either as a smokescreen to cover the far deeper malaise that have seen DRC marked as 187 of 187 countries in the World Development Index, or to attack the Rwandan government. Ending the conflict in the Kivus must be a priority the International Community is concerned with, but to simplify the matter down to whether or not Rwanda is aiding one militia group would be a mistake.

12. The UK government needs to press for the 20089 peace agreement to be honoured by all sides, as pointed to recently by Nigeria’s former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, a past envoy to the DRC. It needs to ensure vital internal security reforms take place that mean the state security forces alone have a military capability, and this is used solely for the advantages of the people they are there to protect, and not against them. It needs to press for land reform so that all inhabitants of the Kivus are treated equally before the law and in terms of political representation. And for judicial reform that will hold accountable all those who have committed violations of human rights and crimes against humanity and end a culture of impunity.

Rwanda and Aid

13. Rwanda has, quite significantly, confounded critics and even the best placed experts in its rise from the ashes of the 1994 genocide. Much of the credit for this should lie with the current government of President Paul Kagame and the incredible response of its people to extreme adversity. Within 18 years a country that had lost more than half its population, its total exchequer and infrastructure, has become one of impressive growth in all sections of society. Rwanda has won a number of prestigious international awards from the business community, anti corruption bodies, for environmental protection and restoration projects, for significant poverty and disease reduction and education and health reforms. In the past week alone Rwanda has won a seat on the UN General Assembly, and had its President awarded the African Peace Personality prize for 2012 after he won the votes of 812,000 young people on the continent.

14. Development aid, well targeted, managed and spent, has been an important element of Rwanda’s success. Unlike several other countries where DFiD’s assistance has also been substantial, it can be argued Rwanda has used the funding on projects such as education and healthcare to the greatest benefit of the recipients.

Development aid will always be associated with politics. However, to cut Rwanda’s aid for political reasons and not developmental ones, given the exceptional way it has been used to help some of the poorest and most vulnerable in society.

15. It is difficult to conceive what the UK government—or the people of the affected region—will gain by the Development Aid being cut. It is clear it will gain support in elements of the media that have targeted Kagame’s Rwanda as the major cause and concern for problems in the Kivus. As has been touched on, the insecurity in eastern Kivu goes far deeper than either the M-23 or any possible foreign involvement, whether justified or not. The UK risks putting in jeopardy vital education projects which will continue to help turn people’s lives around in Rwanda.

16. The UK government would be better focused in pressing for immediate talks between the sides at the centre of the conflict—the M-23 and the DRC government. And in supporting very real regional efforts by the CGLR to procure an international force to target an end to all militia violence and patrol borders to stop arms and recruitment to them. Finally, the current crisis should throw into a new light UK aid to DRC and the need to press the government there into vital reforms to break out of the constant cycle of short-term crises that afflict the people of the region.

17. Rwanda has become an important partner for the UK and a close relationship has been built up since 1994. This should mean the UK government is in a unique place with which to work with Kigali. Withdrawal of development aid as a means of relaying political pressure is surely not a response that is either positive for those who will suffer from the loss of funding or in terms of getting through the message it wants to give. It would also smack of being a knee-jerk reaction to media headlines that have failed to analyse in any meaningful way the relationship between Rwanda and the DRC, and the intrinsic problems within the Kivus that successive government sin Kinshasa have backed away from—or even exacerbated.

References

i For two recent articles on Kivu and the current M-23 situation please see:
www.opendemocracy.net/andrew-wallis/dr-congo-politics-of-suffering
www.opendemocracy.net/andrew-wallis/dr-congo-beyond-crisis-cycle

ii http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=42767&Cr=Democratic&Cr1=Congo#.
UJLHyY7byvY

iii http://www.international-alert.org/sites/default/files/publications/201209EndingDeadlockDRC-EN.pdf

November 2012