 After two decades of terrorising villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo the leaders of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda – composed of ethnic Hutus from Rwanda and known by its French initials, FDLR – have shed their camouflage for ill-fitting black suits to negotiate with the government.
Few see this as realistic. UN officials are cautiously backing the effort, although one said the prospect of political talks was as likely as former Nazis joining Israel’s legislature. The United States is opposed to negotiating with a group that has a history of committing atrocities.
Rwanda has since accused the United Nations of trying “to sanitise FDLR genocidaires.” In a letter sent last week to the Security Council, Rwanda’s UN envoy, Eugène-Richard Gasana, chided the Council for trying to secure a travel-ban exemption for an FDLR leader, so that he could discuss the disarmament efforts with a senior envoy.
“Any further delay in eliminating this group and its ideology would only serve to cause further harm and suffering to the region,” Gasana said.
Having recently quashed a Rwandan-backed guerilla group called M23 and then taken on a radical Islamist group near the Ugandan border called the Allied Democratic Forces, UN peacekeepers are under immense international pressure, not least from Rwanda and its supporters, to stamp out the original combatants of this war, the FDLR.
The UN estimates that there are fewer than 2000 active FDLR fighters left in Congo. Thousands have surrendered to peacekeepers, who have sent them back to Rwanda. The ones coming out of the bush now are being housed, fed and guarded by the UN in temporary camps.
Discussions are also underway to find a third country in which to resettle former combatants.
Source: The Australian Financial Review | 
