SA troops poised for major battle in DRC

File photo: Jerome Delay

File photo: Jerome Delay

Published Jan 13, 2015

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Pretoria - South African troops in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are on the verge of a major battle against the area’s largest remaining rebel group.

The South African government said on Monday that the failure of the FDLR rebels to meet a January 2 deadline to surrender had “rendered the military option inevitable”.

The FDLR (Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda) was established by ethnic Hutus who fled Rwanda after taking part in the genocide against the Tutsis in 1994. It has been a major source of instability ever since.

In 2013, the Force Intervention Brigade (FIB), comprising South African, Tanzanian and Malawian battalions, was established under the UN peacekeeping force Monusco, but with a stronger mandate to “neutralise” all the rebel groups in eastern DRC.

After helping the DRC army defeat the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels in late 2013, the FIB was supposed to go after the FDLR, but it has not done so.

Last year, the FDLR said it would surrender, and on July 2, leaders of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR) held a joint summit where they gave the rebels until January 2 to surrender, or face military action.

On January 3, President Jacob Zuma announced that the FDLR had surrendered only 337 fighters, representing about 24 percent of its estimated force.

Zuma said another SADC/ ICGLR summit would be held this week in Luanda to decide on “appropriate action”.

But on Saturday, the Angolan government, which chairs the ICGLR, said there would be no summit. South African officials could not explain why it had been cancelled. It appears that Rwanda, which wants to be rid of the FDLR, may have put pressure on Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos.

Last week, the UN Security Council called on the DRC government to swiftly approve plans to begin joint operations to “neutralise the FDLR by commencing military operations”.

Yesterday, the South African government said that because the rebels had failed to meet the January 2 deadline, it had “rendered the military option inevitable”.

“We reaffirm our commitment to the objectives for which the FIB was established, inter alia, for the neutralisation of negative forces in the eastern DRC,” the government said.

Independent Media

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