Trump’s plans for mineral-rich Congo are clouded by the fate of the Rwandan rebels

The future of a small rebel group has emerged as one of the key challenges to efforts to cease conflict in eastern Congo, which are crucial to U.S. President Donald Trump’s hopes for a mining bonanza in the region. The efforts are expected to begin by Sunday.

The goal of a U.S.-brokered peace deal announced last month by Rwandan and Congolese foreign ministers was to stop the carnage that had worsened this year when M23 rebels made a rapid advance in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The U.N. and Western nations have accused Rwanda of fighting alongside the M23 rebels to obtain Congo’s minerals, a claim that Rwanda disputes. The Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a group of thousands of Hutu Rwandan rebels, pose an existential threat, according to Rwanda, which maintains its troops are there to combat them.

With just a few hundred fighters, the FDLR—which combines elements of Rwanda’s old army and militias that committed the 1994 Rwandan genocide—is hardly a formidable military force, according to security analysts and diplomats.

However, the FDLR’s significance to the outcome of Trump’s diplomacy is highlighted by the peace deal’s explicit need that Congo “neutralize” the organization once Rwanda leaves Congolese territory.

The Rwandan pullout and Congolese operations against the FDLR are expected to begin by Sunday and be completed by the end of September.

In a report released this month, U.N. experts claimed that Rwanda and M23 are attempting to take over mineral-rich terrain. The “genocidal” FDLR “necessitates the defense posture in our border areas,” Kigali retorted.

The Congolese military was also charged by the U.N. experts for depending on the FDLR in its conflict with M23. A request for comment on that matter was not answered by a Congolese government spokesman, but Kinshasa has stated that it supports making sure that any threat presented by the FDLR is “definitively eradicated,” even by voluntary disarmament. Additionally, it has charged Rwanda with deploying on Congolese territory under the FDLR’s guise.

Given that M23 controls a large portion of the land where the FDLR now operates, Congolese researcher Josaphat Musamba stated that the country could not eradicate the FDLR fighters from the area.

Musamba, a Ph.D. candidate at Ghent University who is from eastern Congo and studies the conflict there, stated, “It would be feasible if the Rwandan-backed rebellion were not active and threatening to conquer other territories.”

Lack of success against the FDLR might be used by Rwanda as an excuse to maintain its soldiers in eastern Congo into September, according to Jason Stearns, a political scientist at Simon Fraser University in Canada who specializes in Africa’s Great Lakes region. This would derail Washington’s plan.

“It would be fairly easy for Rwanda to claim that Congo is not abiding by its side of the deal – that its operations against the FDLR are not serious enough, have not been successful enough – and therefore to drag its feet,” said Stearns.

A request for comment on Rwanda’s stance on the FDLR was not answered by a government spokeswoman. Paul Kagame, the president of Rwanda, stated on July 4 that although Rwanda was dedicated to carrying out the agreement, it might not succeed if Congo failed to fulfill its commitments to neutralize the FDLR.

APPEAL TO TRUMP

On July 9, Trump announced that the presidents of Rwanda and Congo would visit the US in the “next couple of weeks” to sign the peace deal. Additionally, it is anticipated that they would sign bilateral economic packages that would spend billions of dollars in nations that are rich in copper, lithium, cobalt, gold, tantalum, and other minerals. No new information on a date has been released.

Congo and Rwanda have held discussions in Washington, while Congo and M23 have held separate direct talks in Qatar. The two parties decided to sign a separate peace agreement by August 18 on Saturday. As of right now, M23 has no firm plans to leave the area it controls.

Trump has been encouraged by the FDLR not to approve a Congolese offensive against it.
Victor Byiringiro, the FDLR’s interim president, wrote to Trump on July 2 that destroying the FDLR would endanger the lives of over 200,000 Rwandan refugees and Congolese civilians.

FDLR spokesperson Cure Ngoma stated in written answers to Reuters’ questions that only “a frank, sincere, and inclusive dialogue among Rwandans” could bring about peace, despite Rwanda’s continuous rejection of such discussions.

Trump expects Congo and Rwanda to follow the peace agreement “which will foster lasting stability and prosperity in the region,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told Reuters when asked about the future of the FDLR.

“All armed groups must lay down their arms and work within the framework of the peace process.”

This year, the conflict has claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more, raising the possibility of a recurrence of the kind of full-scale regional conflict that killed millions of Congolese between 1998 and 2003.