Congo-Kinshasa: One Year After the M23 Rebellion

Il y a un an, l'armée congolaise assistée de la Mission des Nations unies au Congo (Monusco) mettait fin à la rébellion du M23, ce groupe armé qui pendant un an et demi avait occupé toute une partie du Nord-Kivu

One year ago, with the help of MONUSCO  (Mission de l'Organisation des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en République Démocratique du Congo), the Congolese ended the M23 rebellion, effectively shutting down the group that had occupied entire swathes of North-Kivu for a year and a half.

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This was a historic victory for the FARDC (Forces armées de la République démocratique du Congo), and signified a turning point in government's fight against armed groups in the eyes of Kinshasa. One year later however, the vacuum left by the M23 has quickly been filled, and tens of smaller armed group continue to threaten local civilians.

After dealing with the M23, the Congolese army also sought to defeat the ADF (Allied Democratic Forces) in 2014, a Ugandan rebel organization that has been entrenched in the north-eastern part of the DRC for over twenty years.

However, the FARDC are nine months into a casualty-heavy campaign against the ADF and have still not been able to vanquish the movement.

On the contrary, a series of macabre killings during the past week proves that the group can still be a nuisance to the government, or that it at least still possesses a support network on which it can rely.

The United Nations made the FDLR (Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda), that other armed group operating in the east of the country, their number one enemy this year. However, the UN refuses to attack the Rwandan rebels alone — even though it possesses the mandate by which to do so. Armed operations against the FDLR by the UN have never taken place.

Armed Groups that are still active

The FDLR then offered to disarm voluntarily. An offer than has not for the moment been followed by any concrete action, but has given the group time to possibly plan future military offenses.

The recent FDLR attacks carried out in North-Kivu, attributed to other groups like the NDC Checka (Ndumba Defense of Congo), show that other these armed actors remain active.

Finally, after the victory against the M23, thousands of combatants agreed to put down their weapons. However, some of these fighters have taken up their arms again after a whole year of waiting in camps for a rehabilitation program that never came.

A rapidly deteriorating security situation

The end result of this is that humanitarian actors working in North-Kivu have been warning of a strong security threat to local civilians for the past month. Another problem is that although the M23 was defeated, its men were never demobilized. Over 1500 ex-M23 combatants are still currently living in Uganda.

300 more are in Rwanda, and it is also estimated that around 350 of them have dispersed into the jungle. These are all factors that constitute a potential threat for the DRC if these men decide to take up weapons again, just as certain members of civil society have confirmed they are doing.

This article was translated by Matthew LaLime, Staff Intern with the Africa Program at the Wilson Center. 

Photo courtesy of Kadir Aksoy via Flickr Commons