Rebellion Season in the Congo

originally published in the Daily Nation, Kenya

It’s September again in the Congo. The rains are coming. So are the threats of rebellion. Towns are being pillaged, and the United Nations is being blamed.

Residents in the northern village of Nyamilima on Monday pelted United Nations soldiers with stones, injuring two peacekeepers and damaging vehicles. The attacks against the UN follow protests by the town’s citizens against the presence of Congolese army officers nearby, who for are reported to have been looting the town.

For the last week the town has been held hostage, and reported looted, by a rogue Congolese army officer who took hundreds of troops loyal to him out of the army and into the town.

The contingent are former members of the Tutsi rebellion National Congress for the People’s Defense (CNDP) which last year wrecked havoc on the country before being integrated into the army this past March, but complain that they have not yet been paid.

Though the United Nations could not put a number of rebellious soldiers, it was said to be in the hundreds. As Lieutenant Colonel Jaguar, a loyalist of arrested CNDP leader Laurent Nkunda, negotiated with the Congolese government and the United Nations, his soldiers reportedly turned on Nyamilima’s residents.

According to the UN, on Monday hundreds of residents erected roadblocks using boulders and cut-down trees. By the time the UN was arrived in Nyamilima to settle the population, the population turned on them too.

“People were angry with MONUC because they expected more protection from us,” said UN military spokesperson Jean-Paul Dietrich, in Kinshasa.

Over the last couple years, the United Nations inability to bring and keep peace in eastern Congo has earned it criticism from abroad and violent attacks from the Congo’s own citizens. The worst came last October, when Tutsi rebel leader Laurent Nkunda marched his CNDP to within a few kilometres of the city of Goma, and its resident’s gathered at the walls of the UN’s main compound, throwing rocks and burning vehicles.

Soldiers loot

Due to a political détente between the Congo and Rwanda, and the arrest of Mr Nkunda, the UN’s stature has risen, albeit slightly. But before quieting down, the last couple of days in Nyamilima looked like a microcosm of the Congo all over again.

Last week Lieutenant Colonel Jaguar pulled other formerly-CNDP troops out of the battalion of the Congolese army he led, and led the splinter groups through the forests to Nyamilima. Reports from the UN and international media claim that the soldiers looted Nyamilima and the nearby town of Kitcharo.

After a week, residents began revolting, and protesting against the presence of the soldiers, technically part of the Congolese army. First they cut down trees and made road blocks.

Then they marched in protest through the streets, to the top of the hill the town straddles, before the soldiers starting firing their weapons in the air to scare the villagers off.

When the United Nations arrived, the anger of the mob turned to them.

Relative calm returned Tuesday to Nyamilima, situated 100 kilometres north of the war-torn city of Goma, nearly flush with the Ugandan border. It is an area familiar to the CNDP, where General Laurent Nkunda kept a bulk of his troops during his offensive against the government the last couple of years.

The Congolese army played down Colonel Jaguar’s abandonment, saying he wasn’t a problem.

“It’s not a political problem, it is a problem of discipline,” said the Congolese army’s spokesperson Colonel Richard Kasongo.

But others say that Jaguar’s Rebellion is an example of the very seams of a stitched-together peace ripping apart.

Some former-rebel integrated soldiers have still not been paid any salary at all. Those who have received pay from the government receive less that normal Congolese soldiers. Though ranks technically stay the same, say the UN’s military spokesperson, rebel soldiers do not hold the same level of respect and importance as others.

“It’s the side-affects of the process,” says Mr. Dietrich, adding that similar instances have occurred recently with the Mai-Mai rebel group that is partially integrated into the national army.

“As we understand, they [CNDP soldiers] have not been properly enlisted. And they still have not been paid.”

Loot and rape

In the case of the CNDP, almost entire commands structures have stayed intact.

On the evening of Thursday, September 8th, Colonel Jaguar, who the UN says hold loyalty to Laurent Nkunda, picked his battalion apart, pulling out all the former-CNDP soldiers. He disarmed the others and told them to go to the town of Ishasha, and took the CNDP soldiers to Nyamilima.

They stayed there for over just over a week. Reports from the UN-run radio station in the Congo, Radio Okapi, said that over the weekend the soldiers, reported as FARDC soldiers, looted the city and raped women.

By Sunday evening, the town decided to revolt, first against Col. Jaguar and his troops, and then the United Nations.

It would not be something out of the ordinary for the CNDP – or for that matter, any group – to trash a city and its inhabitants.

In late October of 2008, at the height of Mr. Nkunda’s advance through North Kivu to the capital of Goma, retreating government soldiers fled through the city, raping, murdering, and pillaging residents in a fury of alcohol and humiliation.

A week later, in early November, CNDP soldiers in the village of Kiwanja opened fire on the local population, mostly men and boys, killing scores. The alleged commander of that massacre is General Bosco Ntaganda, who has been reported to hold a senior position in the current UN-backed military offensives in the region.

A couple weeks later it was the Congolese army again, in the city of Kanyabayonga, near Nyamilima.

A United Nations report last week argued that both sides in both the Kiwanja and Kanyabayonga cases committed crimes against humanity.

As of publication, Colonel Jaguar has been relocated to South Kivu as Deputy Commander of new UN-backed military offensives against the Hutu rebels Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda.