DR Congo rebels begin pullout from frontline positions

SAKE, DR Congo: Hundreds of Congolese rebels withdrew Friday from frontline positions around Goma as promised under a regionally brokered deal, while police entered the key eastern city to take over control.

The M23 rebels, army mutineers who sparked international anger when they seized Goma last week in a lightning advance, have said they will withdraw 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the city, the main town in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s mineral-rich east.

Gunmen carrying packs and crates of ammunition trekked down steep hillsides into the small town of Sake, some 30 kilometres (18 miles) west of Goma, before regrouping on the main road, an AFP photographer said.

Residents have reported seeing dozens of rebel trucks carrying food and ammunition trundling through the lush green hills on the shores of Lake Kivu toward Goma, pulling back past the wreckage of last week’s fighting.

The pullout came as more than 270 Congolese policemen arrived in Goma’s port, having crossed Lake Kivu from government-controlled Bukavu some 100 kilometres south, with the army vowing to enter the city the next day.

But M23 military leader Sultan Makenga accused the UN force in DR Congo (MONUSCO) of “beginning to block the movement” of rebels out of Goma.

Makenga told AFP from Sake that the withdrawal “was planned for tomorrow

(Saturday)”, but added that UN peacekeepers “are blocking the recovery of our logistics. We are waiting for the problem to be solved to withdraw.”

The policemen were due “to secure the city of Goma after the pullout of M23 rebels”, said Mondje Nounoubai, a spokesman for the UN peacekeeping force in the country.

Congo’s army, which fled in disarray when the rebels seized Goma and surrounding settlements in the chronically volatile region, will enter the city on Saturday, said army chief General Francois Olenga.

“We will deploy our units tomorrow,” Olenga told AFP. “A battalion will be posted in the city and a company will be posted at the airport.” The rebels’ campaign has raised fears of a humanitarian catastrophe and wider conflict erupting from Congo’s east, the cradle of back-to-back wars that shook the country and embroiled other nations in the region from 1996 to 2003.

Under a pullout deal struck this week in Uganda with army chiefs from the 11-nation International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), senior officers from the regional bloc are travelling to Goma to monitor the withdrawal.

M23 will leave a company of 100 fighters at the airport, and neighbouring Tanzania is also expected to send a company of soldiers to the airport under the deal.

The rebels, who entered Goma 10 days ago, initially agreed to leave on Thursday. Any withdrawal now would likely continue well into Saturday.

Commander Makenga leads some 1,500 fighters, according to a Western military source, and has beefed up his force with heavy weapons and ammunition seized from fleeing government forces.

Makenga was hit with UN and US sanctions last month over alleged killings, rapes and abductions committed by his men.

Decades of conflict between multiple militia forces — as well as meddling by regional armies — have ravaged Congo’s east, which holds vast mineral wealth including copper, diamonds, gold and key mobile phone component coltan.

UN experts have accused Rwanda and Uganda — which played active roles in DR Congo’s 1996-2003 wars — of supporting M23, a charge both countries deny.

Britain on Friday froze $33.7 million (25.9 million euros) in aid to Rwanda following “credible and compelling reports of Rwandan involvement with M23,” International Development Secretary Justine Greening said.

Reacting to the freeze, Rwanda’s Foreign Minister Loiuse Mushikwabo said Rwanda was “disappointed” by the move, adding that blaming Rwanda for the violence may prove detrimental to peace efforts in the region.

“Blaming Rwanda might suit short-term political ends, but ultimately it hinders understanding of the conflict and puts an effective and lasting solution further out of reach,” Mushikwabo said.

Civilians in Congo, many of whom have had to flee repeated rounds of fighting over several years, are suffering. Aid agencies are struggling to cope with the newly displaced, with some 285,000 people having fled their homes since the rebels began their uprising in April.

Tensions too are high at how the potential arrival of the army and withdrawal of the rebels will play out, with residents fearful of new rounds of looting and reprisal attacks by the army. Locals have told AFP that both M23 and the army are guilty of abuses.

The instability in DR Congo’s east was exacerbated by the aftermath of the 1999 genocide in Rwanda, when Hutus implicated in the killing of some 800,000 mostly Tutsi victims fled across the Congolese border after Tutsi leader Paul Kagame came to power.

M23 was founded by former fighters in a Tutsi rebel group whose members were integrated into the regular army under a 2009 peace deal they claim was never fully implemented.

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