A woman hugs a Congolese government army (FARDC) soldier as he arrives at the military barracks in Goma eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Monday. — AFP

Rebels still too close

GOMA — Government forces re-established control over Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern city of Goma on Monday after rebels withdrew, but a senior official said the insurgents were only a few kilometers away and still posed a threat.

The M23 rebel movement pulled its fighters out of the North Kivu provincial capital on Saturday after seizing it from fleeing UN-backed government forces and holding it for 11 days.

But the situation remained tense and uncertain in the absence of any definitive peace accord to end the eight-month-old insurgency, which has displaced thousands of civilians in a region that is a tinderbox of ethnic and political conflict.

North Kivu Governor Julien Paluku, who had left Goma when rebels took it on Nov. 20, met Congolese Interior Minister Richard Muyej in a hotel in the city, which is sited among lush green hills on Lake Kivu on the border with Rwanda.

“I have come back here to work like before,” Paluku told Reuters, saying his residence was looted during the rebel seizure of Goma. The city’s capture triggered an international diplomatic scramble to head off an escalation of the conflict.

Under a deal brokered by Uganda days after Goma’s fall, M23 leaders agreed to withdraw to positions 20 km north of the city after Congolese President Joseph Kabila said he was ready to listen to the rebels’ grievances. But Paluku said some M23 units were much closer to the city than had been agreed. “They are in Monigi. It is only 3 or 5 km away. It is not good,” he said.

M23 spokesman Amani Kabasha told Reuters by telephone some rebels were in Monigi, which is on the road north to Rutshuru.

But he said the fighters there would form part of an M23 detachment that would join government troops and a neutral international force to be stationed together at Goma airport - one of the points agreed in the withdrawal deal.

“We are waiting to move our company to the airport. After that we will decide on the line (between government forces and rebels),” Kabasha said.
M23 draws most of its strength from Tutsi former rebels integrated into the Congolese army who mutinied in April.

It has called for talks between Kabila and political opponents, the release of political prisoners and dissolution of Congo’s electoral commission, which oversaw Kabila’s re-election in 2011 in a vote judged flawed by foreign observers.

Government spokesmen have not confirmed that Kabila is willing to hold such a wide dialogue, and the president faces pressure from within his own armed forces to pursue a military solution against M23. Congo and UN experts say the rebels are backed by Rwanda and Uganda, a charge both strongly deny.
Goma’s dusty streets were busy, with markets open selling vegetables and smoked fish, and roads choked with traffic.

But banks remained closed. “Things are bad because no one has money to buy my fish,” said one woman hawking fish.

In Sake, 30 km west of Goma, several hundred government troops paraded, preparing to re-enter Goma. — Reuters