Current problem in the Great Lakes Region and Museveni factor

To understand well what is playing for the moment people should pay attention to the local geopolitics. You might ask yourself what this has to do with negationism and with bollox but you cannot understand this problem if you’re not looking at the bigger picture.

The relationship of Uganda with Rwanda is currently very bad. A couple of months ago President Museveni made himself a president for a new term in office and this time the election campaign was characterized by much more violence than other times.

Museveni is already in power for decades and his most prominent opponent, Bobi Wine, is accusing him of wide spread corruption, power abuse and many other things.

Economically Uganda is also going down. Election observers also found evidence of fraud. It has become clear the many Ugandans want this situation to change but the old man is clinging on to power.

The relationship with Rwanda is already very bad for a couple of years. Uganda is accusing Rwanda of interfering in its political affairs. Museveni was brought to power more than 30 years ago with the help of Rwandan officers and soldiers who, at that time, were still refugees in his country.

Paul Kagame was at that time in charge of the internal security of the country. But the relationship between these two former allies has always been troublesome.  25 years ago Uganda was often mentioned as an example of good government and leadership in Africa.

But it lost that reputation during the last couple of years. In the meanwhile Rwanda was developing very fast and people were praising President Kagame for his leadership and his zero tolerance on corruption.

Kagame also began to play a leading role in the African Union and many other African leaders started to look at the Rwandan model to organize their own countries.

Museveni and Kagame knew each other very well an according to many analysts their ego’s soon started to fall out with each other. As Rwandan and Ugandan troops both were active and present in the DRC it soon came to clashes.

Things even got worse after it became clear that Uganda was actively supporting Rwandan opposition groups of which the RNC (Rwandan National Congress) of general Kayumba Nyamwasa, Nyamwasa was Kagame’s closest collaborator for years but he fled to Uganda because he didn’t agree any longer with his former comrade in arms.

He was welcomed with open arms in Uganda and finally settled down in South-Africa where he found another longtime collaborator from the past, Patrick Karegeya (former intelligence chief of Rwanda).

Together they set up a new opposition group – rebel movement: the RNC. The RNC soon started recruiting elements in Rwanda that were sent to Uganda. This group linked up with other anti-Kigali rebel groups such as the FDLR that was also given shelter in Uganda.

One of Museveni’s closest collaborators, Philemon Mateke, played a very important role in this. Mateke is a Ugandan Hutu extremist who was and thedaughter still is serving as a minister in the Ugandan government.

Two years ago the border between Rwanda and Uganda was closed for the first time for Rwandan and Ugandan citizens. The Ugandan police also started arresting Rwandans living in Uganda and accusing them of espionage.

Some of them where badly tortured. Very soon it became clear that Uganda was allowing the FDLR and the RNC to travel to Burundi where they could re-organize themselves to infiltrate Rwanda via the Nyungwe forest in the south of the country.

Other anti Kigali groups such as the FLN (Forces de Libération Nationales), of which the Hotel Rwanda hero Paul Rusasabagina claimed to be the leader, also received support from the Ugandans.

The infiltrations of the the FLN and the RNC in Nyungwe were never successful. Rusasabina’s group could stage a couple of attacks on villages in the Nyungwe forest during which they killed several innocent villagers and most of its fighters were killed or taken prisoner.

The RNC set up training camps in the DRC (South-Kivu) where they were quickly dislodged by pro-Rwandan troops who had forged a coalition with the Congolese army, the FARDC.

This year Museveni was put in office by SFC once more but as I told You already these elections were more violent than the previous ones. Dozens of people lost their lives.

In his victory speech after the elections Museveni mentioned that he was fed up with the people meddling in his politics. In the meanwhile the violence in the Congolese North-Kivu province is once again on the rise.

During the last couple of years the FARDC was able to brush out most of the FDLR out of the Kibumba-Jomba-Rutshuru axe. People who know the area well know that the FDLR found shelter in Uganda. There is also evidence that they received logistical support from the Ugandans. 

The three towns mentioned before are at the doorstep of the Rwandan border, with just the Virunga Park in between. A couple of years ago the FDLR tried to infiltrate the park.

Local analysts think now that Museveni might see in a future conflict a way out to cover cover the economic crisis in his country or to boost his popularity.

The population in the Kigezi region (kabale, kisoro rubanda and rukiga) is already very unhappy that the trade between Rwanda and Uganda was interrupted two years ago most of these border towns live from that, people run bankrupt many are in prisons because of bank debts due to loan burden of recovering losses encountered.

Museveni is also trying to divert the economical orientation of the province of North-Kivu towards Uganda. I wrote another paper about that a couple of weeks ago. Via ex-ministers like Philemon Mateke and his daughter who is now a minister in Museveni’s government the Hutu community is North-Kivu is receiving support to revive the old Hutu culture; in local churches and schools the usage of Kihutu (Hutu dialect) was introduced with a very negative anti-Kigali and anti-Tutsi narrative. 

Eugène Serafuli, a former governor of North-Kivu and a close relative of Mateke  – Philemon Mateke was born in Kisoro, nearby Congo – is playing a very important role in all this. Several facts show us that they are even trying to revive the Nyatura Hutu militia. The Nyatura militia is composed of Congolese Hutu’s and they have always collaborated closely with the Rwandan Hutu extremists. This strategy is receiving the moral support of the Rwandan opposition in the diaspora that wants to lure Rwanda into a big war so that the international community can step inn to stop it and to force the current regime in Kigali to negotiate with them.

Add to that the whole discussion about the M23 rebel group, a mainly Tutsi and pro-Kigali military force that was chased out of Congo several years ago by the South-Africans and by Monusco. The M23 never fought back and fled to Uganda and to Rwanda. But the Congolese government never took any steps to re-integrate them. In the meanwhile they got very frustrated and left their refugee camps in Uganda and found refuge in the Virunga Park, on the border between Rwanda and Congo. Last months they launched several attacks against the FARDC.

I was already asking myself which pretext Uganda would use to re-enter the DRC; the white rabbit that came out of the hat of Museveni’s wizard was the ADF-Nalu. Don’t get me wrong: if the ADF really is what some people think and if the group really was behind the recent bomb attacks in Kampala the UDPF might be doing a good job.

In Kigali this ADF-UPDF war is being followed with Argus eyes. The ADF was also stopped in Kigali when they were preparing bomb attacks. The RDF is currently fighting Muslim extremists in Cabo del Gado. There are indications that those jihadi’s count several Congolese in their ranks and that they are in contact with the ADF.

So possible attacks in Rwanda were expected. But the NISS and the Rwandan Police saw them coming.  Kigali knows that Museveni was looking for a good pretext to re-enter the DRC and he seems to have found it now. Even better: the Ugandan president could convince the Congolese government to set up a joint strategy to fight the ADF and even the international community and the UN are now backing him up. With this the international community and the present UN force on the ground in the DRC are indirectly admitting their own uselessness,  one again.