DR Congo Army Halts Latest M23 Advances to Capture More Towns

The Democratic Republic of Congo army and its Wazalendo allies have stopped the M23 rebels and the Alliance Fleuve Congo (AFC) from attacking the country’s Walikale-Centre. The rebels were  pushed back to Mpofi, a locality situated 52 kilometres from the centre, on March 17.

The soldiers and their allies halted the rebel advance, thanks to military reinforcement from Bunia in Ituri province. The rebels had gone close enough to capture Mutakato before they were halted.

Calm returned to the area on March 18, but the town remains heavily militarised with civilians rarely seen in the streets.

Several residents have since last week been moving towards villages situated on the national highway leading to Kisangani. The villages welcoming the displaced persons from Walikale-Centre are Losso, Mungele, Tingitingi, Lubutu Mubi, Ndjingala, Lobu, and Makana on the border area between North Kivu and Maniema.

Meanwhile, East African Community (EAC) and Southern African Development Community (SADC) ministers who met in Harare, Zimbabwe on Monday, March 17 adopted a roadmap to put in place the resolutions of the joint summit without citing Rwanda as supporting M23. The joint SADC-EAC meeting was initially programmed for Friday, Feb. 28 in Harare, Zimbabwe but it was postponed at the last minute.

The roadmap details the measures to immediately put in place in the long and short terms to resolve the conflict in the Eastern DR Congo, where the M23 rebellion supported by Rwanda has been fighting against the DR Congo army.

The roadmap would be submitted to a joint SADC-EAC summit for adoption. The final communique indicates that the immediate measures must be executed within 30 days. These include notably the holding of direct dialogue with the parties in the conflict at the military level in order that they engage in an unconditional ceasefire, the cessation of hostilities, and a stop in all territorial expansion in order to enable free movement of humanitarian agencies, the opening of the Goma and Kavumu airports, and uninterrupted evacuation of the conflict zone.

A joint SADC-EAC verification mechanism will be put in place to oversee the cessation of hostilities and an unconditional ceasefire. Taking into account the presence on the ground of the enlarged joint verification mechanism on the international conference on the Great Lakes Region and the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the DR Congo (MONUSCO), the meeting recommended that the international conference on the Great Lakes Region should examine the possibility of SADC and EAC reinforcing the joint verification mechanism by detaching supplementary personnel to serve as principal observers of the cessation of hostilities, the ceasefire, and the humanitarian situation.

It is also intended that a joint SADC-EAC technical evaluation team made up of 12 to 16 experts from the army and other governmental agencies should be constituted to evaluate the security and humanitarian situation in the North Kivu and South Kivu provinces, as well as the state of critical infrastructures (airports and other key infrastructures). This team would be composed of experts in operations, intelligence, logistics, public works, and aviation.

Though the communique did not recognize Rwanda as supporting the M23 rebellion, according to several United Nations reports, the Rwandan army is active in the DR Congo and has been fighting alongside the M23 to capture territory in North Kivu province.

The eastern part of the DR Congo has been in turmoil for decades due to conflicts and tumultuous relations exacerbated since the Rwandan genocide of 1994. DR Congo has always accused Rwanda of wanting to take over its natural resources.