Nkunda Manifesto Revealed

originally published in the Daily Nation, Kenya

A political manifesto allegedly written by former Congolese warlord Laurent Nkunda just days before he was arrested by the Rwandan government surfaced for the first time last week.

In the manifesto, Mr. Nkunda details his political and military ambitions, past relations with Rwanda, and determine to rearrange national borders in the region.

Mr. Nkunda, the former head of ethnic Tutsi rebel group National Congress for the People’s Defense that threatened to topple the Congolese government this time last year, was arrested in late January by Rwandan troops invited in the Congo, heralding a new peace between the two countries.

A preamble to the document claims the manifesto, which says was found by Nkunda’s family after he was arrested, was being made public in response to tense a standoff last week between Congolese Tutsi refugees in Burundi and the Burundian army over their freedom to return to Congo.

In the document Nkunda emphasizes the CNDP’s rise as an organically Congolese movement rather than a proxy of the Rwanda government, saying his rebellion “never has received a single table, single cartridge, much less single directive,” from Kigali.

At the same time, he outlines his insurgency along ethnic Tutsi lines, citing his admiration for, sense of kinship and occasional acquaintance with the current Rwandan regime, including its senior military.

Since 2004, Mr. Nkunda claimed, he has been in Rwanda’s capital Kigali only once, in early 2007. At the time he claims to have been in contact with the chief of Rwanda’s army, flying in army helicopters, and called Rwandan president Paul Kagame the “unofficial mediator” of the eastern Congo conflict, specifically in the protection of minority Tutsi in Congo.

“Rwanda is a neighbor of mine, whose national language, culture and ethnic composition are identical to those of my Community-Chefferie original Bwishya,” Mr. Nkunda says in the document translated from French.

He also argued that “intangible borders” had separated what otherwise be a natural nation of eastern Congo, Rwanda and neighbouring Burundi. He argues ethnic Hutu and Tutsi people have lived in the three “transvolcanic” countries.

For the last fifteen years, eastern Congo has suffered foreign invasion, mass insurgency, and an unsteady insecurity scarred further famine and volcanic eruptions. The situation, sparked by the mass influx of Rwandan Hutu genocide-committers in 1994, reached crescendo between 1999 and 2001 when eight African nations partook in a continental war.

“The CNDP is therefore a direct response to the Sun City agreement,” referring to the 2001 peace agreement that obliged Rwanda and Uganda to leave Congolese soil, ending the war.

Many of the soldiers remained. With each transformation, they have pulsed deep in to eastern Congo’s provinces, targeting the FDLR and occupying mineral-rich land.

Nkunda’s specific demands in the manifesto included institutionalized protection of minority groups in the province such as the Tutsi, the disarmament of the FDLR, and reinvention of the national army.

“The task is daunting,” Mr. Nkunda says. “Whatever happens, whatever it costs, we will go straight to the point.”

Even with Nkunda arrested, Congo has been pulled by Rwanda into obeying the most serious demands; the disarmament of Rwanda’s genocide perpetrators. First Rwanda’s army was allowed into the country from January to February too root out the FDLR, and now the Congolese army is being back by the United Nations to fight the Hutu rebels in Congo’s South Kivu province. According to multiple human rights reports, the operations have done far more humanitarian damage than military good.