{Kateku: Doubts linger over a long-announced military offensive against Rwandan rebels based in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, but local people and relief workers are preparing for reprisal raids on civilians.
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The rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) already “confiscate part of our harvest, then make us pay money to get to our fields,” farmer Jean Bosco Hitimana, 35, said beside his cassava crop.
“If you don’t have the money, they tie you up and beat you,” Hitimana added on his land near the town of Kiwanja, about 60 kilometres (37 miles) north of Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, which borders on Rwanda and Uganda. Hitimana said he would welcome an assault on the FDLR, which has been active in the forested hills of North and South Kivu for two decades and accused of killings, rape and looting, “because the population is suffering.”
Yet the prospect of clashes has also worried the father of four since the distant regime in Kinshasa announced military action at the end of January, after an international ultimatum for the FDLR to surrender expired.
At odds with the authorities, the large UN mission in DRC (MONUSCO) has withdrawn support during the planned offensive, raising the stakes for villagers caught between badly paid, potentially dangerous Congolese troops and the FDLR forces. Local non-governmental organisations are getting set for massive population displacement towards the border or within the unstable Rutshuru territory of North Kivu if the Congolese army (FARDC) launches an assault. “We’d only just begun to undertake arrangements for the resettlement” of people returning home, said Paul Kambale, director of the Centre for Rural Development (Cederu), a non-governmental organisation that helps displaced people.
“Now, we’re up against the same challenges as in pre-war days,” Kambale added, referring to the conflicts that ravaged large parts of the country in 1997-2003. “If they organise (military) operations, the FDLR will attack the population.”
The FDLR, believed to number between 1,500 and 2,000 fighters in both Kivu provinces, was founded by Hutu extremist ex-militias and soldiers wanted by international jurisdictions for their suspected part in the 1994 genocide of minority Tutsis in Rwanda.
Source: Daily Times
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