Summit of regional leaders makes little progress in resolving DRC conflict

The much-anticipated joint summit between the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and East African Community (EAC), which ended on Saturday, failed to agree on concrete measures to address the warfare in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The meeting of leaders from both regions notably refrained from explicitly calling on Rwanda to withdraw its forces from eastern DRC where they are providing substantial military support to the M23 rebels who have captured large swathes of DRC’s North Kivu and South Kivu provinces and are still on the march.

One analyst said Rwandan President Paul Kagame was the big winner of the joint summit as it didn’t even explicitly mention Rwanda’s involvement in the fighting in DRC, let alone demand Rwanda’s withdrawal.

The communique from the summit also showed a lack of urgency in addressing pressing issues. It said the chiefs of the defence forces of the SADC and EAC member states should meet within five days to “provide technical direction” on matters such as an “immediate and unconditional” ceasefire, humanitarian support including the repatriation of dead soldiers and evacuation of the wounded, and reopening supply routes and the vital airport at Goma, the capital of North Kivu province which is occupied by M23/Rwanda.

The summit gave SADC and EAC ministers a further 30 days to meet to consider the report of the chiefs of defence on these urgent issues. This slow pace is likely to affect the 2,000-plus SA National Defence Force (SANDF) soldiers, some of whom are wounded, who remain trapped in their bases around Goma and nearby Sake in difficult conditions.

Fourteen SANDF soldiers, together with three from Malawi, one from Tanzania and one from Uruguay were killed in fighting with the M23/Rwanda or in crossfire between the rebels and Congolese troops, between 23 and 27 January around Goma. After tough negotiations, the remains of the South Africans, Malawians and the Tanzanian were finally released on Friday and arrived at Entebbe in Uganda on Saturday, the SANDF announced.

It said “standard pathology procedure” would start on Sunday and should be completed by Tuesday. The implication was that the remains would be flown home after that.

Most of the SA soldiers, the Tanzanian and the Malawian had been deployed to eastern DRC as part of the SADC Mission in DRC (SAMIDRC). Some of the South Africans and the Uruguayan had been members of the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC, Monusco.

Summit outcomes

The joint summit in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, was attended by the key antagonists, DRC President Felix Tshisekedi and Rwandan President Paul Kagame as well as President Cyril Ramaphosa, Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnangagwa, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud and representatives of other SADC and EAC countries.

They agreed to merge the two separate and sometimes conflicting peace processes which have been addressing the eastern DRC conflict — the Luanda process led by Angolan President João Lourenço and the Nairobi process led by former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta.

The summit leaders directed the resumption of direct negotiations and dialogue with all state and non-state parties (military and non-military) including M23.

They called for the implementation of the “Concept of Operations” which had been agreed to by DRC and Rwanda in the Luanda process. This directed DRC to neutralise the Hutu Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo (FDLR) which operate in eastern DRC, in exchange for “the lifting of Rwanda’s defensive measures/disengagement of forces from the DRC…”.

They “directed that modalities for withdrawal of uninvited foreign armed forces from the territory of the DRC be developed and implemented”.

A win for Rwanda

Stephanie Wolters, a senior research fellow and Great Lakes expert at the SA Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, told Daily Maverick that Kagame appeared to be the winner at the summit “as there was no explicit mention of Rwanda’s role”, although the leaders had called for the withdrawal of uninvited foreign armed forces.

She said the summit was “very mitigated”, and that merging the Luanda and Nairobi peace processes didn’t make sense as the Nairobi process was not going to happen because it was about negotiations among local armed groups who were not close to returning to the negotiation table.

“I just think this was really weak. I don’t think it’s going to change anything on the ground. I don’t think a ceasefire is going to come into place any time soon.”

Read more: Eastern DRC — Unpacking the difficult task of regional diplomacy

Bram Verelst, a senior researcher on conflict prevention, management, and peacebuilding in the Great Lakes Region at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Nairobi, said it was not enough to just merge the Nairobi and Luanda processes.

“A peace process now has to adapt to the new circumstances of the M23 rebellion, which has a clear and explicit agenda to provide an alternative to the Congolese state in the areas under its control. It has appointed governors and mayors, territorial administrators, etc.

“My first impression is that the EAC-SADC summit did not overcome regional differences and that the summit statement, instead, reflects these. So what we are left with is the bare minimum that everyone can agree with — no explicit mention of Rwandan presence nor a call for its and M23’s withdrawal. There is not even a condemnation of the violation of Congolese territorial integrity by the rebellion.”

Dialogue with M23?

Verelst said the most positive takeaway was that future meetings would continue to take place at the levels of chiefs of defence forces and ministers. But he added that the 30-day framework for these meetings seemed to indicate a lack of urgency, while there was a real risk of regional escalation, including with Burundi, as M23 continued its advance southward through South Kivu province towards the Burundi border.

He said the decision to combine the political track of the Nairobi peace process and the Luanda peace process had to be seen in the light of the planned meeting between Tshisekedi and Kagame in Luanda on 15 December last year which had failed because Kagame insisted that DRC should negotiate with M23. Tshisekedi refused, saying the Luanda process was strictly interstate.

Verelst said merging the Nairobi and Luanda processes would mean accepting the need for DRC to hold dialogue with M23 in addition to the agreement by DRC and Tshisekedi that DRC would neutralise the FDLR in exchange for Rwanda withdrawing its forces from DRC.

He said merging the two peace processes could include the option of deploying the EAC Reaction Force (EACRF) to eastern DRC to provide a buffer for dialogue and the execution of the Luanda peace process agreements.

“This has likely some support in EAC, but I can’t see Tshisekedi agreeing with this.”

Another reason that this might not work was the expansion of M23, which now saw itself as the occupying force. “Would they agree to this?” he asked.

The EACRF was the military track of the Nairobi peace process. It deployed in eastern DRC from late 2022 but Tshisekedi ordered its withdrawal after a few months because he said it was failing to take on M23. Instead, he asked SADC to deploy a force that would take on M23 and at a summit in May 2023 SADC leaders agreed to do that. They ordered the formation of SAMIDRC.

Read more: SA’s mandate in the DRC and what is going wrong

There has been some speculation about whether SADC would terminate SAMIDRC after its losses on the battlefield last month. Some observers have noted the absence of any mention of SAMIDRC in the communique of the joint summit.

Analysts said they assumed this was because the SADC countries did not want to discuss SAMIDRC’s future publicly with the EAC and would rather address it within SADC.

Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, said Ramaphosa did not have a separate, bilateral meeting with Kagame on the sidelines of the summit in Dar es Salaam. The two presidents clashed in a war of words last week, swapping blame for the fighting between SA and M23/Rwanda. DM