[img]http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64446000/jpg/_64446698_64446693.jpg[/img]
[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20534962[/url]
[quote=BBC News][B]The military commander of M23 rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo's east has said his troops will begin to withdraw from recently captured towns.[/B]
But Sultani Makenga said 100 fighters would remain at Goma's airport.
His spokesman has told Reuters news agency that a handover ceremony will be held in the strategic city on Friday.
At a crisis meeting over the weekend, regional leaders said the fighters must leave Goma before any negotiations could be held with them.
Since the M23 rebels mutinied and deserted from the army in April, some 500,000 people have fled their homes in the ensuing unrest.
Both Uganda and Rwanda strongly deny UN accusations that they are backing the M23.
Correspondents say it has been a confusing couple of days in Goma, with contradictory comments from the M23.
On Tuesday it was reported after talks in Uganda that Brig Gen Makenga had agreed to withdraw his forces to a 20km (12-mile) buffer zone around Goma.
At the same time the movement's political leader said this would not happen unless Congolese army troops in the region disarmed - and he also gave a long list of other conditions, which included the release of political prisoners.
However, Brig Gen Makenga said on Wednesday that he had now ordered his fighters to gradually withdraw, first from smaller towns around Goma captured in the last week.
They would move to nearby Kibati, about 20km north of Goma, in the coming days, he said.
"We will leave one company of M23 here at the airport... 100 military [fighters]," the rebel commander said.
There are reports that the movement's political wing may also remain in the city.
M23 spokesman Lt Col Vianney Kazarama told Reuters that a handover ceremony would take place on Friday in Goma, where a UN peacekeeping contingent is based.
Following the rebel capture of Goma, the UN has warned of a growing humanitarian crisis in the mineral-rich region.
Aid officials said the fighting has made camps for people displaced by earlier conflicts inaccessible, with food and medicines running short.
Some five million people died during the 1997-2003 DR Congo conflict, which drew in several regional countries.[/quote]
DO we even know why they started doing this?
[QUOTE=Swilly;38630823]DO we even know why they started doing this?[/QUOTE]
Why don't we go send some reporters or someone over there to ask them?
[QUOTE=YourFriendJoe;38630883]Why don't we go send some reporters or someone over there to ask them?[/QUOTE]
I don't know? That would be a great idea except no one has said anything on even speculating what M23 is trying to do.
[QUOTE=Swilly;38630940]I don't know? That would be a great idea except no one has said anything on even speculating what M23 is trying to do.[/QUOTE]
The above post was a joke but I just did some thinking here (shocking I know).
What if we sent all the criminals on death row to do reporting and to find shit out? I mean really, we don't have to waste money on supplies to kill them, the real reporters can stay safe reporting from home, and if they don't get shot, hey then they get to live a little longer.
It's a great idea.
[QUOTE=Swilly;38630823]DO we even know why they started doing this?[/QUOTE]
[url]http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2012/11/20121126936588395.html[/url]
[quote]The vast majority of M23 leaders were members of a previous rebellion, the National Congress for the Defense of the People, known as CNDP. The CNDP was also backed by Rwanda. In 2009, the governments of Rwanda and Congo struck a deal to stabilise the eastern Congo, leading to Rwanda's arrest of the commander of the CNDP, Laurent Nkunda, and the integration of the CNDP into the Congolese army. This was the so-called March 23 Agreement that the current rebellion is named after.
The M23 say that the government did not abide by the terms of this agreement, in particular they didn't give their officers adequate ranks and salaries, didn't give their political leaders good positions in national government, and didn't do enough to bring back some 55,000 Congolese Tutsi refugees from Rwanda, where many had been living for over a decade. This led them to launch a mutiny in April this year, eventually attracting around half of high-ranking former CNDP officers.
Some of this is true, but some is also misleading. Contrary to this bleak picture, the CNDP were given many very lucrative and influential positions after their integration.
Like many other Congolese officers, these former rebels used their positions to accumulate wealth, through illegal taxation, cross-border smuggling and protection rackets. Crucially, the ex-CNDP were allowed to stay in the East, where they maintained parallel chains of command within the army.
The real reason the M23 officers launched the mutiny was less due to their professed grievances, but because the Congolese government wanted to bring an end to their privileges. They threatened to dismantle their networks by redeploying some of their top officers elsewhere in the country. It was this that triggered the rebellion. This mutiny initially failed, but Rwanda stepped in to prop it up.
But it would be short-sighted to stop in 2009, as this account leaves many deeper questions unanswered. Why does the Tutsi community have so little trust in Kinshasa? Why does the Rwandan government, which stands to lose a lot in terms of reputation and donor aid, back the rebels? The Congolese Tutsi community has a long, checkered relationship with state power. As many of them are descendants of immigrants - some came during the colonial periods, others following after pogroms in Rwanda in 1959-1962 - their citizenship has often been called into question, and there have been several attempts to collectively strip them of their rights. Vicious anti-Tutsi sentiment is a sad reality of life in parts of the region.
Rwanda is a more difficult nut to crack. There is no doubt about its support, but its motives are more difficult to parse. The government in Kigali has held sway over this part of the Congo for most of the past sixteen years, and it has developed economic interests there. But there are also security imperatives - the FDLR, or Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, their arch-enemies whose leaders include some of the people involved in the 1994 genocide, are still based in the eastern Congo, albeit much weakened in recent years. And the simmering chaos there makes it a fertile staging ground for any other forces that might seek to destabilise Rwanda.[/quote]
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
