Updates: Kamitatu, $637 million and ministerial discord

A few updates:

• The Congolese government signed a deal yesterday with its Chinese counterpart for a $637 million loan to rebuild the Zongo II hydroelectric dam in Bas-Congo. The dam is supposed to produce 150 megawatts, a part of the Kinshasa's 1000 megawatt needs. It's not clear what the terms of the loan are.
• The Alliance pour le Rénouveau (ARC) political party of Planning Minister Olivier Kamitatu announced that they will support incumbent Joseph Kabila for the 2011 elections, but intend to run on their own for the legislative elections. ARC currently has about 5 percent of seats in national elected institutions - 25 MPs, 7 senators and two national ministers.
• The government appears to becoming more and more dysfunctional - for a second time in the space of a few days, Prime Minister Adolphe Muzito reversed a decision taken by one of his ministers. Two days ago it was the reinstatement of directors of the National Lottery Society, who had been fired by the Minister of State Companies. Several days before that, Muzito had countermanded the decision by the Education Minister to suspend the executive board of the National Pedagogic University (UPN).

Breakthrough in peace talks with armed group in the Kivus

This past week there was a breakthrough in peace negotiations between the national army and the Forces Républicaines Fédéralistes (FRF), a mostly Banyamulenge armed group based in the High Plateau in South Kivu above Uvira and Fizi.

There have been many rounds of talks, led by different envoys from Kinshasa, since the FRF established themselves in the High Plateau in 2005. The group, led by self-proclaimed Generals Venant Bisogo and Michel Rukunda, has never been a serious military threat, fluctuating between 50 soldiers at the beginning and over 500 at the moment. But Congolese army operations against them have often led to causalities and abuses among both civilians and military and have had a serious impact on the humanitarian situation in the High Plateau. The FRF have also played a role in a complex web of alliances that has included the FDLR, various Mai-Mai groups and young Burundian Tutsi.

If this peace deal holds, it will obviously be a good thing.

Why have talks succeeded this time? It is not entirely clear. The terms appear to be favorable to the Banyamulenge insurgency. Bisogo (previously a colonel in the RCD rebellion) and Rukunda (who I believe was a major, but a stanch critic of Rwanda) will be able to keep their ranks of general and their troops will be integrated into 431st brigade that is deployed in the hills close to where their families are. A key condition of their integration (and that of the CNDP before them) had always been that their troops remain in the Kivus.

Perhaps the largest concession they were able to extract from the government is the departure of General Pacifique Masunzu, the Banyamulenge commander of South Kivu's military region where they are located. Masunzu fell out with FRF and has led the often brutal military operations against them since 2005. In addition, Bisigo would become the second in command of South Kivu's military region and Rukunda (who is also known as Mekanika) would become the operational commander in Uvira.

However, the FRF apparently had to drop their demands for back pay and has agreed to hand over all of their stocks of weapons and ammunition. In addition, the contentious status of Minembwe has been deferred for the moment and it seems unlikely - if the peace deal holds - that it will be brought up again. The FRF, along with many other Banyamulenge, had been pushing for the creation of a territory of Minembwe, so they could have had their own administrative services (land and marriage registry, etc.) and electoral district.

Already, a peace ceremony has been held in Minembwe, and some 500 FRF soldiers are reportedly on their way to integrate with the Congolese army. The soldiers are supposed to be deployed in operations against the FDLR. However, there are fears that this will set a strong precedent for other armed groups, and that they will now also be making similar demands. Nonetheless, there were reports of a sizable demobilization of Mai-Mai Cheka, Kingombe and Kifuafua in Hombo, on the border between North Kivu and South Kivu this past week.

Reports that don't often make it to the surface

A friend sent me this paragraph from an internal UN agency report this week.

On 26 January XXXXX received reports that twenty seven women in Kasakwa (29 km southwest of Fizi) claimed to have been raped and looted by FDLR/FOCA on their way back from Milimba market (37 km southwest of Fizi) on 21 January. XXXXX. Meanwhile, the Cmdr of the 4211 FARDC Bn informed PakBatt-3 EWC TOB Lulimba (south of Fizi) on 26 January, that an FARDC Corporal from the   4211 Bn FARDC temporarily attached to the HQ 421 Bde FARDC located at Misisi, raped his own eight year old daughter. The perpetrator is allegedly on the run but is being pursued by the FARDC to face the law.

 Unconfirmed reports, but disheartening nonetheless.

What happened to Stephen Kinzer?

Stephen Kinzer, a staunch supporter of Rwandan President Paul Kagame just published an opinion piece in the Guardian newspaper saying that the country's authoritarian turn is risking its future.

Strange, because less than a month ago, Kinzer published a piece in the same paper, saying that "the authoritarian regime is the best thing that has happened to Rwanda since colonialists arrived a century ago."

Just compare these two passages. In his December piece:

The Rwandan regime has given more people a greater chance to break out of extreme poverty than almost any regime in modern African history – and this after a horrific slaughter in 1994 from which many outsiders assumed Rwanda would never recover....My own experience tells me that people in Rwanda are happy with it, thrilled at their future prospects, and not angry that there is not a wide enough range of newspapers or political parties. 

 The piece published yesterday:

President Kagame should accept the possibility that his judgment may not always be correct, and listen earnestly to Rwandans with different ideas. He still has the chance to enter history as one of the greatest modern African leaders. There is also the chance, however, that he will be remembered as another failed African big-man, a tragic figure who built the foundations of a spectacular future for his country, but saw his achievements collapse because he could not take his country from one-man rule toward democracy.

The motivation for his criticism, he says, are events of recent weeks, and in particular the opposition to the regime by Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa and three other former high-ranking members of the RPF. But the "Rwanda Briefing" he mentions was published in August last year, and the assassination attempt against Gen. Kayumba was in June. Yes, over the last month we have seen the sentencing in absentia of those four former officials, as well as an alliance being forged between Kayumba's Rwandan National Congress and Victoire Ingabire's FDU-Inkingi.

But Kinzer's about face is surprising.

Who is buying minerals from the Kivus?

Apparently not many people. President Kabila imposed an export ban on minerals from the Kivus in September of last year; since then, it has been difficult for companies to sell even the ore they have stockpiled in Goma, Bukavu and Kigali. As commodity prices soar on the London Metals Exchange, prices of tin in the region have fallen. One mineral exporter I spoke to even said they had dropped to a third of the world price. This goes not only for Goma, but also for Kigali apparently - the rationale is not just Kabila's export ban but reputational problems for companies and banks involved in the trade. We reported here last year that Malaysia Smelting Corporation, which used to be the largest buyer of Congolese tin, was having problems securing credit on international capital markets due to reputational risks.

So the export ban has fueled smuggling of tin, tantalum and other minerals, but apparently much of the ore is just sitting in warehouses in the region, waiting for better days.

The question is then not only when will Kabila open the trade again, but when will steps be taken to ensure that companies can buy ore from the Kivus without incurring reputational damage?

Slow progress in voter registration

Here are the latest figures I've been able to get from the UN regarding voter registration:

Voter registration has been concluded in Bas-Congo and (partially) in Kinshasa. It is currently ongoing in Maniema and the next provinces will be Kasai Occidental and Katanga, then Bandundu, North and South Kivu, Kasai Orientale, Equateur and then back to Kinshasa to finish updating the electoral roll there.

But will they finish in time? Already, the results have  been meager in some places. In Kinshasa, the revision took place between June 7th and September 1st, but only 1,405,300 people registered - that's about half as many voters registered for the 2006 elections. As a reminder, the electoral commission has asked everyone to re-register. Five years ago, the big draw was that the electoral card also served as an ID card - that is no longer an incentive.

In Bas-Congo, the registration was much more successful. Registration offices were open for 4 months and registered 1,489,350 voters, a good 200,000 more than had previously signed up.

In Maniema, after two months of registration they are only at 409,440 registrations - that's only around 60 percent of the voters registered in 2006. There were two weeks of delays when materials ran out and had to be brought in from Kinshasa. Elsewhere, there have been protests at the lack of registration offices; in North Kivu, these were reduced by half in comparison with 2005/6, meaning many people had to walk much further and with fewer incentives than last time around.

My worry is now that with only ten months to go before elections, the CENI will be hard pressed to register all the voters, clean the lists of duplicates and publish them. They plan to step up registration operations, but with 8 provinces to go, plus another revision of Kinshasa's electoral roll, it will be tight. Until now, they have only done two provinces at a time. My uneducated guess is that they will now have to do four provinces at a time and only for 2 months to have enough time to process all the information and tidy up the lists.

I hope I am wrong.

Regional countries mull over the possibility of joint military action

As previously reported here, Rwanda, Burundi and the DR Congo met in Kigali last week to discuss the military situation in the eastern Congo. At the end of the meeting, they alleged that a new coalition of rebel groups had formed in the Kivus region, including such unlikely allies such as the FPLC, Mai-Mai Sheka, FDLR, Mai-Mai Yakutumba and FDLR-Soki.

The most controversial allegation to come from the meeting was that two Rwandan dissidents, Col. Patrick Karegeya and Gen. Kayumba Nyamwasa, are allegedly involved in this new rebel coalition.
While sources from the eastern Congo  certainly confirm sporadic collaboration between the FPLC, Mai-Mai Sheka and the FDLR, the links among the other armed groups and the involvement of the two former Rwandan officers are less clear.

Some sources familiar with the closed-door meeting suggest that the three countries were not just sharing information. Allegedly, new joint military operations on Congolese soil are being discussed. Congo Siasa reported a possible joint operation between the Congolese and Rwandan armies in November, but talk of such a plan subsided as tensions within the CNDP decreased; most importantly, the Congolese government decided not to move ex-CNDP units out of the Kivus, the CNDP political party joined the ruling AMP coalition and some ex-CNDP military ranks were confirmed. The massive recruitment drive that Gen. Bosco Ntaganda had carried out between September and December relented somewhat, although some forced recruitment continues.

Now, Congo Siasa has obtained a copy (available here) of an operational order outlining similar joint operations, dated December 20th, 2010. The document, whose authenticity I have not been able to confirm with the Congolese government but which comes from a reputable diplomatic source in Kinshasa, orders the North and South Kivu commanders to each put together a company of 120 well-trained soldiers by January 6th. Each company is supposed to consist of 40 per cent former soldiers from CNDP and PARECO armed groups, with the rest coming from the regular army. The purpose of the mission: carry out joint military operations. No further details are provided.

It is not clear whether the plan will actually be carried out, and whether this document was indeed signed by Amani Leo commander Gen. Amuli. A military source familiar with the substance of the Kigali confirmed that joint military operations were on the agenda.

The surprising part of this development is that military operations will certainly not be advantageous for President Kabila's public image. It was during the last joint operations that Vital Kamerhe fell out with the president over the deployment of Rwandan troops on Congolese soil. Even if these new deployments - that appear to be quite small, at least on the Congolese side - are kept relatively secret, this is a very delicate subject for the Congolese government during this pre-electoral period.

It is also unclear why a new operation would be launched now. The most obvious reason is that the Rwandan government appears genuinely concerned about a coalition between Gen. Kayumba and rebel groups in the eastern Congo. An international official in South Africa reported to Congo Siasa recently that the South African government was preparing a meeting between Gen. Kayumba and other Rwandan diaspora figures late last year; it is not clear whether the meeting actually took place. Last week, the Rwandan government tried and sentenced Gen. Kayumba and three of his colleagues to long prison sentences in absentia.

It is highly unlikely that the South African government would agree to extradite the former Rwandan officials. The government in Pretoria is still furious over the attempted assassination of Kayumba last year on its soil, allegedly by Rwandan agents. Their ambassador to Kigali was recalled last August and, to the best of my knowledge, has not returned.

Burundi, whose minister of defense participated in the Kigali meeting but is not mentioned in the operational order, is also increasingly concerned about attacks on police, allegedly linked to the re-arming of the FNL rebellion, which is reported to have bases along the border with the Congo on the Rukoko plains.

What would an operation entail? Again, there is little clarity. A diplomat I spoke to in Kinshasa speculated that the governments want to target a small breakaway group of ex-CNDP soldiers loyal to Nkunda and prevent any possible alliance with Gen. Kayumba from congealing.