Hidden agenda in DRC mutiny

2004-06-05 15:37

Bukavu - Claims by the former rebel whose men captured a key town in east Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) that he was acting to save the ethnic Banyamulenge community do not stand up to scrutiny, according to sources in the area.

Laurent Nkunda, a key figure in a Rwandan-backed former rebel group now in DRC's unity government, has repeatedly insisted the only reason he led several thousand men to take the Sud-Kivu capital of Bukavu on Wednesday from regular forces was to protect this group of Congolese Tutsis.

Although supposedly now an officer in DRC's new integrated army, Nkunda has refused to report for duty at the general staff in Kinshasa.

Nkunda claims the Banyamulenge, who have Rwandan roots and still speak the language of the neighbouring country, had been the victim of attacks in Sud-Kivu motivated by a widespread rejection of their adoptive Congolese nationality.

Hidden agenda

Suspicions of a hidden agenda have been fuelled by Nkunda's deployment since late Friday of columns of men along the main roads leading from Bukavu, which lies on the Rwandan border, into the interior of DRC.

There is no hard evidence suggesting the Banyamulenge have been the target of planned attacks by regular army troops, according to humanitarian sources in the town, even if some lost their lives during the most recent clashes on and around May 26.

"Investigations are underway, but for now we have nothing to confirm that there was any systematic massacres of Banyamulenge," one such person said.

Despite vehement accusations from Kinshasa, evidence that Nkunda is acting on behalf of Rwanda is circumstantial.

He fought alongside Paul Kagame - now Rwanda's president - in the Tutsi rebellion that fought Kigali's then Hutu government between 1990 and 1994 and went on to take power in July of that year, ending the Tutsi-targeting genocide.

And he served in the Congolese Rally for Democracy (RCD), the former rebel group that together with Rwandan troops controlled most of eastern DRC during the 1998-2003 civil war. Milked for nothing

"People are fed up, not only those who speak the Rwandan language, but other communities as well, with having been milked by successive Kinshasa regimes and having won nothing in return except war and refugees," one analyst of Congolese affairs said.

The soil in the Kivus is rich in minerals and very fertile.

Another theory is that Nkunda hopes to swap Bukavu for an amnesty for what some human rights organisations have termed atrocities committed during his time with the RCD.

Fears abound that his actions herald the start of a third rebellion, after the 1996 insurgency against dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, also backed by Rwanda, and the 1998 emergence of the RCD.

DRC President Joseph Kabila has openly accused Rwanda of seeking to start another war, a charge denied both publicly and privately by officials in Kigali, who seem not to have the stomach to cross the border again.

- AFP