Military officers from Rwanda and Democratic Republic of Congo are fueling violence in easternCongo despite pledges by the countries to foster peace, according to a confidential U.N. experts’ report seen by Reuters on Friday.
A rebel group in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo continues to recruit fighters in neighboringRwanda with the aid of sympathetic Rwandan military officers, the U.N. Group of Experts said in its interim report to the Security Council’s Congo sanctions committee.
The allegations are likely to displease Kigali and Kinshasa, which have signed a U.N.-backed peace agreement and pledged to cooperate on bringing peace and stability to mineral-rich eastern Congo, where millions of people have been killed and many more displaced in decades of conflict.
Recruitment and other forms of support for the M23rebels have waned in recent months, though the insurgent forces still pose a security threat in easternCongo, said the U.N. Group of Experts.
“Since the outset of its current mandate, the group has to date found no indication of support to the rebels from within Uganda, and has gathered evidence of continuous – but limited – support to M23 from withinRwanda,” the report said.
“The group sent a letter to the government of Rwandaon 14 June 2013 asking for clarification about this support and looks forward to a reply,” the U.N. experts said in the 43-page report.
Collaboration between elements of the Rwandan military and M23 continue, it said. “The Group received information that M23 commanders have regularly met with RDF ( Rwandan Defence Forces) officers,” the report said.
“Three former M23 officers, a former M23 cadre, and several local authorities told the Group that from March through May 2013, they had witnessed M23 Colonels Kaina and Yusuf Mboneza with RDF officers,” it said.
But it said that since the brief fall of provincial capital Goma in November 2012 the Group of Experts has not received evidence of full Rwandan army units supporting M23.
Congolese troops work with FDLR rebels
Last year the experts accused Rwanda‘s defense minister of commanding the M23 rebellion, which it said was being armed by Rwanda and Uganda, both of which sent troops to aid the insurgency.
The latest report said there was no current signs of Ugandan government support for M23 but said limited recruitment activities by the M23 continued on Ugandan territory. It added that Ugandan officials have thwarted several attempts at recruitment.
The allegations come as the United Nations, which has a large peacekeeping force known as MONUSCO in the region, prepares to deploy a special intervention brigade in eastern Congo. That brigade’s goal is to aggressively search out and destroy armed groups operating in eastern Congo.
“The Group notes that sanctioned individual Col. Innocent Kaina of M23 remains engaged in the recruitment of children,” it said.
The experts said that they have also received information indicating collaboration between theCongolese military and FDLR rebels, the remnants of Hutu killers who carried out the 1994 genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda, in North Kivu.
“Faced with the rapidly evolving M23 rebellion in 2012, the FARDC ( Congolese army) first abided by a tacit non-aggression agreement with the FDLR,” the report said.
“However, the declining security situation in eastern DRC, culminating with the fall of Goma on 20 November 2013, enhanced the collaboration between some FARDC units and the FDLR in areas of close proximity with M23-controlled territory,” it said.