Rwanda Claims ‘Right to Respond’ Amid Tensions With Congo Over M23 Rebel Group’s Resurgence

Speaking in the Rwandan capital of Kigali on Tuesday, Rwandan Foreign Minister Vincent Biruta said that while Rwanda wants strong and friendly relations with its larger western neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), it would not hesitate to defend its own interests.

“The Congolese should understand this; our region has seen enough suffering and wars and we don’t want any more war. Rwanda wants, and is ready to have, good relations with Congo and all other countries,” Biruta said, as quoted by the Kigali daily The New Times.

Biruta added that "[if] the attacks continue, Rwanda will have the right to respond and to protect the security of the country, to protect the security of its citizens, and we have means to do that."

A number of incidents in recent weeks have soured relations between Kigali and Kinshasa, including the kidnapping of two Rwandan border guards by Congolese forces and the injuring of several Rwandans on the Rwandan side of the border by rockets fired from the Congolese side.

The Rwandan Defense Forces (RDF) blamed the latter event on the Armed Forces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (FARDC), but the spokesperson for the governor of Congo’s North Kivu Province called that “a dramatization of the situation.”

The rockets were ostensibly being fired not at Rwanda, but at soldiers from the March 23 Movement, or M23 - a rebel group believed to have been defeated in 2013 before it returned last year, accusing DRC President Felix Tshisekedi’s government of failing to live up to its commitments to fighters who demobilized as part of the peace accord.

Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame have spoken several times in an attempt to defuse tensions, and Kagame has asked the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (EJVM) to investigate the rocket incident. However, he has not backed down on accusations that Kinshasa is backing extremist Hutu rebels descended from those who carried out the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, and Kinshasa has repeatedly claimed that Kigali created and supports the M23, a Tutsi group.

A similar dynamic sparked the Congo Wars after Rwandan forces entered North Kivu to destroy Hutu forces that Zairian President Mobutu Sese Seko refused to pacify. Tutsi proxy forces backed by Rwanda and Uganda then overthrew Mobutu and founded DR Congo, but soon broke with their benefactors, who launched new attacks against the Hutu Power group the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Those attacks were unsuccessful, and Rwanda says the FARDC continues to work with the DPLR in North Kivu.

On Tuesday, Martha Pobee, assistant secretary-general for the UN’s political affairs and peace operations in Africa, called on the United Nations Security Council to act in defense of peace in North Kivu.

“It is imperative that this Council lend its full weight to ongoing regional efforts to defuse the situation and bring an end to the M23 insurgency, once and for all,” Pobee said, noting that “continued dialogue between the concerned governments remains indispensable to avoid a further escalation of violence in eastern DRC.”

MONUSCO, the UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo, has some 14,000 troops on the ground, most of them in North Kivu in an attempt to keep the various factions there from engaging in open warfare or in crimes against humanity, such as rape and the empressment of child soldiers.

The intermittent fighting since November has displaced some 70,000 people near the city of Goma on Lake Kivu. Across the country, some 5.6 million people are internally displaced - the most of any African country.