FDLR ‘disarmament’ process sluggish, deadline ignored
Midway to a deadline set by regional leaders, not one FDLR militia had laid down weapon and yet rivalries among African nations are undermining the prospect of UN-led military action against insurgents responsible for the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
“If it was entirely up to us, we would be fulfilling our mandate to neutralize armed groups,” says Martin Kobler, head of the 23,000-strong UN peacekeeping mission in the Congo, acknowledging the reticence of some political actors but voicing confidence that military action would ensue if the January 2 deadline is missed.
The FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) fighters have made the hills and forests of mineral-rich eastern Congo their own during two decades of simmering conflict since they fled Rwanda after committing the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi.
Some Congolese military commanders retain close ties to FDLR fighters from alliances forged during a 1998-2003 war.
African leaders gave the militias six months in July to disarm and be repatriated to Rwanda or transferred to a transit camp in the Congo while they await resettlement in a third country.
On Monday, the leaders acknowledged no progress had been made and repeated a vague threat of military force if the deadline was missed.
But some powers are keener on that than others. “Everyone wants to go after the FDLR in a different fashion,” says Timo Mueller, an independent researcher in eastern Congo. “It will be the FDLR who will benefit from this cacophony of actors.”
Criticised for years for failing to impose peace in the Congo, the UN peacekeeping mission has been buoyed by the success of the 3,000-strong Intervention Brigade, launched last year, with the mandate and firepower to take the fight to myriad rebel groups.
Officials say there are only about 1,500 FDLR gunmen left after the UN peacekeeping mission demobilised more than 12,000 in the past 12 years, but their integration in Congo makes it hard to separate them from civilians.
Speaking from a bush base in eastern Congo, Victor Byiringiro, the FDLR’s interim leader, said his fighters would not return to Rwanda as a result of the UN-backed repatriation programme;  thus underlining the militias would not voluntary disarm.
“The FDLR is not a mystery, it’s not a complicated armed group to deal with,” Rwandan Foreign Affairs Minister Louise Mushikiwabo says.
Other African powers have been more cautious, calling for a political solution that could broach a range of thorny issues, including the fate of the more than 100,000 Rwandan refugees remaining in the Congo; whom the FDLR claims to protect despite the reports that FDLR fighters use refugees as their battle field shields.
Tanzania and South Africa are the core of the beefed-up UN brigade, all who have voiced hesitation over a military solution to the FDLR.
