Assaulting a sovereign state, pillaging it and massacring its inhabitants are very serious international crimes that led to the creation of the United Nations in 1945 after the murderous occupation of European countries by the forces of the Third German Reich, Adolf Hitler. Since, international instruments have been adopted to establish the principles of state sovereignty and respect for the integrity of their territories. Principles skilfully flouted by the model of security crises in eastern Congo involving elusive geopolitical actors.
For most people unfamiliar with the dynamics of violence in eastern Congo, the mass killings are carried out by armed groups with acronyms as mysterious as varied. Too often people limit themselves to the FDLR and the Mai-Mai, the former presented as a Hutu rebellion fighting against the Tutsi regime of Paul Kagame in Rwanda and, the latter being members of the Congolese indigenous tribes fighting against the occupation of their country by foreign forces, notably Rwandan. Between the two, the FARDC, the army of the Congolese government, and MONUSCO, the UN force deployed in the Congo. On the other side of the border, the RDF, the army of the Rwandan government. Put in such clear terms, the Congo crisis should be resolved in a few weeks, a few months at most, the protagonists being known, as well as their legitimate claims. But things are not so simple. Indeed, behind the apparent actors, hides a geostrategic dynamic led by the powers of Kigali and Kinshasa using roundly pursued scrambling strategies to make national and international opinion unable to understand what is really going on. Namely a massive military invasion of the DRC and the occupation of its territories on the scenario of the AFDL war (1996-1997), but behind a multitude of names of armed groups whose spread of violence cannot find a rational explanation at first glance.
In this analysis, we will try to focus on three armed groups which serve as a mask for the offensive of deadly reoccupation of eastern Congo by the Rwandan army[1] with the blessing of the Kinshasa government[2] : 1 / The “FDLR”, 2 / the “presumed ADF”, 3 / the “CODECO” (in Ituri).
FDLR combatants used by the FARDC. Rwandan army also returns FDLR repatriated to Rwanda to fight in DRC.
1. The “kagamised FDLR” and the false flag operations
FDLR[3] can be considered as the ideal cover for the current deployment operation of Rwandan forces in the Congo. First, they can serve as a legitimate justification for the deployment of the Rwandan army on Congolese soil, as appeared in a leaked joint operations planning document in October 2019[4]. The FDLR may also serve as ideal guilty of all sorts of atrocious crimes that the two regimes commit on Congolese populations, as part of false flag operations. A false flag operation is an attack on the civilian population carried out by agents of a state by making it appear that the action was carried out by a criminal organization or a usefully demonized political movement. A strong, even aggressive communication generally follows to impose an official version, and effectively prohibit any questioning, and even any credible judicial inquiry. The stakes behind false flag operations are diverse and varied. In general, it is a question of breaking up a population deemed hostile to power or of imposing a political and social order which had no chance of being accepted if the population had been led to pronounce freely for or against[5].
The phenomenon of “false FDLR” and fake Interahamwe dating to the Second Congo War (1998 – 2003), as we mentioned in our book “Les Génocides des Congolais“[6]. Kigali had set out to create fake Interahamwe, a phenomenon that the African Association for the Defense of Human Rights (ASADHO) had already described in its annual report of 2000, two years before the UN experts did reveal the hoax behind the official motives for Rwandan interventions in the Congo. “These are Rwandan Hutu attackers, and sometimes Congolese, operating directly under the command of Tutsi officers, who have been identified several times as such by numerous victims”[7]. The Belgian daily Le Soir had mentioned share the certainty that the injected Rwandan soldiers have false Interahamwe in Congo, in order to terrorize the population and force him to flee,”so as to use these attacks to justify sustainability of the Rwandan presence in Kivu”[8], empty areas of their habitants and install from are people redundant in Rwanda. What made the FDLR/Interahamwe phenomenon a strategic and even economic ally of Kigali’s power[9]. Since then, the phenomenon has persisted and has grown 20 years later.
The FDLR were created in 1999 by former military officers and political leaders of the government of former President Juvenal Habyarimana, in eastern Congo occupied. But the movement has since been infiltrated and broken up into several antagonistic factions, of which only a small minority are today really hostile to the power of Kigali.[10] A large part of the FDLR, returned to Rwanda, are “recycled” in training centers and then returned to the Congo to support the war of conquest of the territories and occupation. In its December 2014 report, Réseau Paix pour le Congo (NGO based in Italy), reveals that throughout 2013, ex-combatants of the FDLR were recruited in the Demobilization Center of Mutobo, in Rwanda, and returned to the Congo to fight in the ranks of the M23[11].
This deployment of “kagamised FDLR” is assured by Rwandan FARDC officers and Congolese officers linked to Rwanda by their past in former “Tutsi rebellions” (RCD-Goma, CNDP, M23). They thus pass without being worried as FARDC soldiers or “Hutu of Masisi” in search of land, bizarrely in Beni and Ituri, lands to carnage and whose natives are being chased from their homes. A strategy that allows Kigali to have several thousand fighters in Ituri, since 2014, and be able to conduct operations in the identity of local armed groups infiltrated and used to cover the spread of violence which the lethal virulence increasingly astonishes the members of the local communities, although in crisis.
2. The ADF phenomenon in Beni and the state lie
The Beni crisis, which struck people with a flood of particularly cruel images, unleashed in October 2014, ended by betraying the presence in the territory of a concentration of Rwandan forces operating under ADF masks, name of a former Ugandan rebellion defeated in April 2014. The acronym “ADF” will serve as a perfect cover for the genocidal reconquest of Congolese territory by Rwandan forces protected by a network of officers loyal to Joseph Kabila and linked to the Kigali regime by their past in the “rebellions” sponsored by Rwanda, and even in the Tutsi rebellion of the RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front ). Accusing “Ugandan Islamist rebels allied with the Islamic State” was a brilliant strategic idea. A phantom enemy, who does not speak, who has no spokesperson to claim the attacks or deny the massacres that will be committed and attributed to him.
This phenomenal capacity of Kabila and Kigali powers to mislead international opinion is surely the most successful degree in the strategy of false flag : organize the killings of civilians and bring people to orient their outrages to imaginary and elusive enemies[12] lost around the world: the Tabligh sect in the Indian subcontinent, the Kampala mosque (Uganda), the Islamic State in Raqqa (Syria), Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Al Shebab in Somalia, AQIM in the Maghreb and even Boko Haram in Nigeria … while the killings are committed in a small territory of Beni (7,484 km²) landlocked in a remote area in the center of Africa and squared by 21,000 soldiers FARDC[13] and several hundred MONUSCO peacekeepers ; and always close to the positions of the army and MONUSCO (100 m, 200 m, 300 m) by men dressed in FARDC uniforms, described as FARDC soldiers, many having even been formally recognized by the survivors of the massacres and their names mentioned in the reports of investigators of the UN[14].
The crimes of Beni ended up betraying their perpetrators whose signature referred to the operating mode of the Inkotanyi of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF)[15], as was recalled by the Canadian writer Judi Rever in her presentation at the Paris conference on the Great Lakes of March 9, 2020[16].
A refugee camp in Bunia
3. CODECO in Ituri or the tree that hides the forest
The province of Ituri, Beni neighbor, suffered waves of violence since December 2017. This violence, which takes place in the territory of Djugu[17], have turned into repeated massacres mainly targeting the Hema community and causing mass exoduses , especially on the other side of Lake Albert, in Uganda. According to the official narrative, these massacres are the fact of a Lendu armed group presented as politico-religious, CODECO. CODECO, originally named CODEZA[18] was originally an agricultural cooperative of peasant solidarity in the Walendu-Bindi chiefdom, founded by Bernard Kakado[19] before the war in Ituri from 1999 -2003[20].
When the conflict broke out in December 2017, no reference was made to this organization. The attacks lasted few days, and are marked by an organization limited degree, which is conventional in the communal violence that occur in the province. On December 29, 2017, on the initiative of the provincial governor, and with the support of MONUSCO, the leaders of the two communities concluded a peace and awareness – raising agreement. Calm returns to the territory and the displaced populations return to their homes.
But in February 2018, a unit of the 31th Brigade[21] called “Voltigeurs”’, the 312th Rapid Reaction Battalion is deployed in areas of Djiba and Loko , under the command of General Mundos, a Kabila henchman, former commander of Operation Sukola1[22], and cited in several UN reports for his role in the Beni massacres. In the same month of February 2018, around twenty people were killed in Blukwa and Drodro, not far from the positions of the unit commanded by Mundos. Then followed reprisals and the spread of violence in several communities. The attacks are coordinated and conducted simultaneously, using Motorola radios, the radio call signs, and, from September 2018[23], coordinated military tactics, which betrays the existence of at least a command structure, an ability to carry out planned operations, a logistical organization and a certain level of discipline[24]. They indiscriminately strike the members of all the communities, Hema as Lendu, which astonishes the notables of the two communities, provokes a climate of paranoia and general distrust.
In March 4, 2018, the unit of the 31th Brigade had passed under the command of General David Rugayi. This FARDC officer was described in a report by the UN Panel of Experts as an important supporter of the FDLR and an arms supplier to Rwandan Hutu fighters[25]. Rugayi is a Hutu from Masisi. He was the bodyguard of Jules Mutebusi, one of the leaders of the CNDP rebellion. FARDC sources describe him as a cold killer, responsible for several serious human rights violations wherever the troops under his command have operated.
A military invasion under the guise of migration
At the time of the crisis, Ituri faced an anecdotal flow of migrations of populations from Rwanda. These populations named themselves as “Banyabwisha,” the name of the community from Bwisha, in Rutshuru territory[26]. But their number is too large for them to be from a so small size community, while no local source, nor Masisi or the Bwisha, which they claimed to be originating, outlines the towns and villages deserted by their inhabitants bound for Ituri. These populations, whom the former governor of North Kivu Julien Paluku, described as “populations of unknown origin”, had finally alarmed the parliamentarians of the Ituri Caucus[27]. In a declaration published in Kinshasa on May 22, 2017, these elected officials were firmly opposed not only to the massive arrival of these populations, but also to “the execution of the Machiavellian plan for the balkanization of the Democratic Republic of Congo in using Ituri Province as a trigger”[28].
According to our research, this migration are deploy of massive Rwandan forces composed of former Rwandan subjects expelled from Tanzania and FDLR recycled in military training camps in Rwanda and sent back to Congo. The “banyabwisha” identity serves as a strategic deception in a remake of the “banyamulenge” deception used in 1996 by Rwanda to mask the aggression and the military occupation of Congo / Zaire. The Ituri MP estimated their number at 70,000 to 100,000 installed mainly in sectors of Boga and Tchabi in Irumu territory[29].
To return back to the attacks on civilians carried out in Djugu by assailants not otherwise identified as “Lendu militias”, it will be until June 2019, more than a year after the start of the violence, that the authorities formally attribute attacks on an identifiable organization: CODECO, and designate the name of its presumed leader, Ngudjolo Mapa[30]. But this version is not at all credible, as it appears in the report of the group of UN experts[31] and the UNJHRO[32]. CODECO, which existed long before the start of the attacks, and which had not been questioned, will suddenly become the generic name to designate all the actors of violence in the territory of Djugu aimed in particular Hema populations. There was every reason to believe that the authorities had decided to put the atrocities on the back of an easily culpable culprit in this security chaos obviously involving several actors behind the scenes.
Ngudjolo was killed by FARDC on 25 March 2020 in Mokpa in the area of Walendu-Pitsi, but attacks against civilians continued, requiring an analysis of the crisis beyond antagonisms of local communities. Like the “ADF” in Beni, the “CODECO” appears over the months as the label used to mask a war of geopolitical issues that exceed of the conflicting part of the Djugu crisis. There are reports of M23 elements infiltrating into areas of violence and operating under the “CODECO” mask[33] to take the town of Bunia in a vice from the north.
According to Jean-Jacques Wondo: “Behind the conflicts in Ituri, is hided a project concocted by Rwanda and Kabila to create a Rwandan RDF military base in Ituri under control of FARDC troops loyal to Rwanda. Besides the occupation of the region, the other objective is to destabilize the Ugandan regime of Yoweri Museveni from the DRC”. The possibility of delivering the province of Ituri to military battles similar to those which took place in June in Kisangani in 2000 cannot be excluded. But for the moment, Rwanda wishes to control Ituri by implanting in the territories of Djugu and Irumu the ex-FDLR repatriated to Rwanda under false identities of the Banyabwisha. It was these Rwandan Hutus who unleashed large-scale massacres against the population of the Hema community around 2017 to create interethnic tension between the Hema and Lendu communities. The second strategy is to use the Lendu militia FPRI (Force of Patriotic Resistance of Ituri), to ally with the Rwandan killers installed in the localities of Chabi, Boga and Mitego to intensify the attacks against the Hema while by expanding their attacks on all the Nilotics and other Bantus who have welcomed the Hema into their entities. This is why the CODECO did not hesitate to massacre the Alurs, the Mambisa, the Banyalis and the Ndo-Okebo, respectively in the territories of Djugu, Mahagi and Aru ; but also north of Irumu towards Mwanga, with the complicity of the FARDC units. These massacres are taking place under the supervision of several former CNDP and M23 rebels reintegrated into the FARDC. These include Colonel Innocent Zimurinda, cited in a 2010 report by the UN panel of experts[34], majors Jimmy, Bill and Maseva, as well as about twenty ex-CNDP and ex-M23 officers sent by colonel ex-M23 Innocent Kaina alias India Queen.”
Conclusion
Behind the Djugu crises operates a black hand and shaped dynamics of security chaos and military reconquest of Rutshuru Ituri axis on the side west of the Ugandan-congolese border by forces loyal to the regime of ; Kigali agents infiltrated in the FARDC. The territory of Irumu, through its sectors of Boga and Tchabi, becomes the nerve center of the Kabila-Kagame strategy to capture the contested territories of Beni and Lubero to the south, by controlling the strategic route which connects them to the commercial city of Bunia, in order to be able to suffocate them economically, if necessary. Irumu becomes as the rear-base for military conquest operations northward to achieve a strategic spread of security chaos into the province of Haut-Uélé/Isiro where rampant mysterious breeders Mbororo. The accelerated implantation of more than 100,000 Rwandan subjects under the false identity of “Banyabwisha” and the activism of Rwandan army officers[35] gives to think that behind the horror of the massacres repeatedly emerges in fact a new geopolitical map which should devote a territorial extension of Rwanda and consolidate its political-military hold in the provinces of North Kivu, the Ituri and, ultimately, Haut-Uélé by explosive junction with the Mbororo[36].
The question is whether the Kinshasa government, particularly President Felix Tshisekedi, is preparing a strategy to thwart the expansionist deadliest ambitions of Rwanda in the eastern Congo territories. In any case, the Congolese soldiers on land seems to have realized the gravity of the situation and conducted Machiavellian led of the eastern problematic neighbor. In January 2020, in Beni, a patriotic mobilization involving civilians and soldiers was launched to vilify the policy of compromise and betrayal of the power of Kinshasa. People could read through the arteries of the city slogans and banners in Lingala:
“COOP NA BANGO EKOSIMBA TE!” (Their plot will never succeed!).
Boniface MUSAVULI
Political analyst and author
Text proofread by Jean-Jacques Wondo
Books :
– B. Musavuli, LES ÉLECTIONS AU CONGO – Carnages, martyrs et impunité, amazon, avril 2020, https://www.amazon.fr/%C3%89LECTIONS-AU-CONGO-Carnages-impunit%C3%A9/dp/B087SCJ5HG
– B. MUSAVULI, CONGO’S BENI MASSACRES, amazon, juin 2018, https://www.amazon.fr/CONGOS-BENI-MASSACRES-Islamists-Occupation/dp/1983214744
– B. Musavuli, LES MASSACRES DE BENI – Kabila, le Rwanda et les faux islamistes, amazon, juillet 2017, https://www.amazon.fr/MASSACRES-BENI-Kabila-Rwanda-islamistes/dp/152170399X
– B. Musavuli, LES GÉNOCIDES DES CONGOLAIS – De Léopold II à Paul Kagame, amazon, août 2017, https://www.amazon.fr/G%C3%89NOCIDES-CONGOLAIS-crime-lhumanit%C3%A9-Congo/dp/1549574213.
Notes
[1] On December 16, 2019, DESC reported the presence of several Rwandan battalions estimated at around 4,000 soldiers in operations in the DRC. CF. JJ Wondo, « L’armée rwandaise en cours de réoccupation de l’Est de la RDC ? », desc-wondo, 16 décembre 2019, http://afridesk.org/larmee-rwandaise-en-cours-de-reoccupation-de-lest-de-la-rdc-jean-jacques-wondo/. In April 2020, the presence – unofficial – of the Rwandan army on Congolese soil was confirmed by RFI. See « L’armée rwandaise en RDC «constitue une violation de l’embargo sur les armes» (GEC) », rfi.fr, 15 avril 2020, http://www.rfi.fr/fr/afrique/20200415-arm%C3%A9e-rwandaise-en-rdc-cette-pr%C3%A9sence-constitue-une-violation-lembargo-les-armes-ge.
[2] Tshisekedi is in duet with Kabila on security issues. A Tshisekedi-Kagame pact was betrayed by the leak, in October 2019, of a document signed by General Mbala Musense, FARDC chief of staff, reporting the deployment of armies from neighboring countries to fight against armed groups on Congolese soil. All the countries mentioned in the document have given up sending their troops to the Congo except one, Rwanda, whose troops have been deployed on Congolese soil in FARDC uniforms.
[3] Democratic Liberation Forces of Rwanda. The FDLR was created in 1999 by former military officers and political leaders from the government of former President Juvénal Habyarimana, during their exile in eastern occupied Congo.
[4] https://twitter.com/JJPWondo/status/1183392721677049862
[5] The development of alternative media and the dedication of independent researchers have, over the years, helped to demystify these practices, which are part of state terrorism. Finally, the FDLR can also serve as combatants in the service of the Kigali regime, which many people find it difficult to believe.
[6] B. Musavuli, Les Génocides des Congolais – De léopold II à Paul Kagame, amazon, août 2017, https://www.amazon.fr/dp/1549574213?ref_=pe_870760_150889320
[7] ASADHO, Rapport annuel, 2000, p. 42.
[8] Le Soir, 8 septembre 2000.
[9] When Rwanda became the world’s largest exporter of tantalum, which it does not have in quantity underground, it was the FDLR that occupied the mining areas in eastern Congo. In other words, the Hutu FDLR, supposed to be the sworn enemies of the Tutsi in power in Kigali, did good business with Congolese coltan for the prosperity of their common country: Rwanda.
[10] The FDLR-FOCA (Forces Combattants Abacunguzi ), which have only a small number of combatants (more or less 500) are today considered to be the only ones openly fighting against the regime of Paul Kagame. Many of their military leaders have been captured or killed in recent months, including General Sylvestre Mudacumura, killed on September 18, 2019 in Bwito, Rutshuru territory, in an attack by a unit of Rwandan special forces dressed in FARDC uniforms. The other FDLR factions are more or less linked to the power of Kigali.
[11] FDLR: PASSÉ, PRÉSENT ET POSSIBLES STRATÉGIES, http://www.paceperilcongo.it/fr/2014/12/fdlr-passe-present-et-possibles-strategies/
[12] B. Musavuli, « Les massacres de Beni et le mensonge d’Etat », https://www.agoravox.fr/tribune-libre/article/rd-congo-les-crimes-de-beni-et-le-220118
[13] In November 2019, official figures were that 21,000 FARDC soldiers had been deployed to Beni, to fight a handful of maquisards who had no known rear base, military command, or spokespersons to claim or deny the attacks on the population attributed to them by the authorities. Research will then make it possible to locate a massive deployment of Rwandan forces along the Congo border with Uganda. See map of the concentration of Rwandan forces in the article by JJ Wondo, « L’armée rwandaise en cours de réoccupation de l’Est de la RDC ? », afridesk.org, 16 décembre 2019, http://afridesk.org/larmee-rwandaise-en-cours-de-reoccupation-de-lest-de-la-rdc-jean-jacques-wondo/.
[14] B. Musavuli, Beni’s Congo Massacres, Amazon, July 2017.
[15] The images of Beni’s victims bear the signature of two favorite procedures of the Inkotanyi (RPF): the “agafuni” (old hoe with which the victim’s head is struck) and the “akandooya” (the arms and the victim’s legs are tied behind their backs until they die bursting after excruciating pain). The writer Charles Onana mentions this in his books. Read also « Le vrai visage du FPR, ‘l’Armée Sans Frontières’ de Paul Kagame », afridesk.org, 21 février 2020, http://afridesk.org/le-vrai-visage-du-fpr-l-armee-sans-frontieres-de-kagame-desc/?fbclid=IwAR16K7vJPzHkdlQozyXuZJabxAzLc5hsZFj2u57HKwyJt4Gl0DACmY12mJM
[16] The hand of Rwanda in the Beni massacres was recalled by the Canadian writer Judi Rever during her presentation at the Paris conference of March 9, 2020 on the Great Lakes. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTURZx8xPgI&feature=youtu.be. Judi Rever is the author of the book In Praise of Blood: The Crimes of the Rwandan Patriotic Front in which she documents the crimes of the RPF by Paul Kagame.
[17] The Djugu (8,730 km²) is one of the five territories of Ituri province in addition to Aru, Mahagi, Irumu and Mambasa. It is located in the immediate north of the city of Bunia, capital of the province.
[18] “Zaire Economic Development Cooperative”.
[19] Kakado then became a member of the FRPI armed group known to have been led by Germain Katanga in 2002-2006 ( see dossier CPI ), then Baudouin Adirodo and Justin Banaloki alias “Cobra Matata” in 2012. The FRPI is an Ngiti militia. The Ngiti are populations of Ituri related to the Lendu. They are established in the south of the territory of Djugu and in the neighboring territory of Irumu.
[20] Between 1999 and 2003, the province of Ituri, has been the epicenter of violent clashes and massacres between communities Hema and Lendu. Commonly known as “the Ituri conflict” or “the Ituri war”, this initially land conflict quickly turned into an ethnic war, which could only be stopped in September 2003 after 3 months of an operation by European troops (Operation Artémis) carried out by the French army.
[21] The 31st Brigade is a FARDC unit whose members are known to obey a parallel command and refuse to obey the official hierarchy.
[22] BUREAU CONJOINT DES NATIONS UNIES AUX DROITS DE L’HOMME HCDH – MONUSCO, Rapport public sur les conflits en territoire de Djugu, province de l’Ituri, Décembre 2017 à septembre 2019, Janvier 2020, p. 17.
[23] This is what the UN has called “the first phase”. In its January 2020 report, the UNJHRO distinguishes three phases in the Ituri crisis, the first of which, consisting essentially of confrontations without particular military tactics, began on December 17, 2017 in the aftermath of an ordinary fight between a young Lendu and a group of young Hema at the entrance to the Uzi market, in the Walendu- Djatsi community. See Report S / 2018/531 of the UN Group of Experts of June 4, 2018, p. 31, § 159. The three phases of the Ituri crisis: – First wave of violence: intercommunity confrontations (December 2017 – May 2018), – Second wave of violence: Attacks against government forces (September 2018 – May 2019), – Third wave of violence (from June 2019). See BUREAU CONJOINT DES NATIONS UNIES AUX DROITS DE L’HOMME HCDH – MONUSCO, op. cit., pp. 7-14.
[24] In 2019, there were reports of arms deliveries to the Lendu militias by FARDC officers. The militarization of these militias and the crimes against the Hema would ultimately aim to demonize the Lendu to legitimize a more or less official deployment of the Rwandan army in the province in the name of the fight against the Hema genocide, in the same scenario as the invasions of Congo in 1996 and 1998 the official reason for protection of the minority Tutsi in Kivu. I remained skeptical until the day I was intrigued by reading the word “genocide” in the UNJHRO report of January 2020 on the crisis in Ituri.
[25] Rapport S/2009/603 du Groupe d’experts de l’ONU du 23 novembre 2009, pp. 13-14, §§ 36-39.
[26] The two communities that make up the territory of Rutshuru (5,289 km²) are Bwito in the west and Bwisha in the east, with seven groupings each.
[28] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gx_cbnLRDYc
[29] A strategic area from where the death squads move to Beni, south, and Djugu, north under various labels (ADF, CODECO, Lendu militias, FRPI,…)
30] Ngudjolo was rather at the head of a movement called “Union of Revolutionaries for the Defense of the Congolese People (URDPC).
[31] Rapport S/2019/974 du Groupe d’expert de l’ONU du 20 décembre 2019, pp. 20-21.
[32] BUREAU CONJOINT DES NATIONS UNIES AUX DROITS DE L’HOMME HCDH – MONUSCO, op. cit., pp. 15, §46.
[33] The M23 was originally a Tutsi militia, but his military leader, Sultani Makenga, was linked to the FDLR movement that Rwanda used to destabilize eastern Congo. Armed from Rwanda to Congo in 2012-2013, the M23 did not fight a battle against the FDLR while one of the FDLR bases was located in Katemba, in the neighboring locality of Kiwanja controlled by the M23. During clashes between the Makenga factions and Bosco Ntaganda in February 2013, the Makenga group, close to the Kigali regime, had joined forces with the FDLR to fight the Bosco Ntaganda group and force the latter to flee and take refuge in the U.S. Embassy in Kigali, where it was handed over to officials of the International Criminal Court ( see dossier CPI) on March 22, 2013.
[35] The supervision of the Rwandan military establishments in the territory of Irumu is ensured by colonel RDF Bernard Ngozi Kasumbu, close to Paul Kagame and officer of the special forces of the Rwandan army. The Zunguluke runway, south of Irumu, serves as an arms delivery point. Between 11 and 14 December 2019, the Rwandan president discreetly sent his minister of internal security, General Patrick Nyamvumba, to Bunia and Beni, who then appeared in Kampala as part of the disputes between Rwanda and Uganda, which made it possible to hidehis secret mission in the massacre areas of Beni and Ituri.
[36] The Mbororo are livestock keeper populations who invade north-eastern DRC from the Sahel countries.
