Rwandan authorities have arrested renegade Congolese general, Laurent Nkunda. He's the leader of a Tutsi rebel force that's been involved in the long-running war in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Anchor Marco Werman gets the story from the BBC's Peter Greste.
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MARCO WERMAN: I'm Marco Werman, and this is The World, a co-production of BBC World Service, PRI, and WGBH Boston. President Obama's inauguration was celebrated all across Africa. Many on the African continent consider Mr. Obama, whose father was from Kenya, one of their own. The new President has also promised to pay more attention to Africa's problems. And one of the biggest problems confronting Africa is the long-running war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Today, there was major news on that front. The renegade Congolese general, Laurent Nkunda, was arrested. He was the leader of a rebel force that had been fighting against the Congolese army. Nkunda's rebels recently staged an offensive in Eastern Congo that forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes. By the way, you can learn more about Laurent Nkunda in “The War in Congo†at theworld.org. The rebel leader's arrest took place in neighboring Rwanda. That was surprising because Nkunda was supposedly an ally of Rwanda. The BBC's Peter Greste is following the story from Nairobi, Kenya. He's met Laurent Nkunda and says he's a charismatic figure.
PETER GRESTE: He's a very tall and elegant man. Thinly pinched face, very intense eyes. But he also is extremely ruthless. He's a man who has been already indicted for war crimes by the Conoglese and we believe he will be extradited on that basis. But he is also a man who, I think, really stood for what the Tutsi people believed in. I remember -- he was in the Eastern Congo, ostensibly to chase down the remnants of the Interahamwe. These were the radical Hutu militias who were responsible for the terribly brutal genocide in Rwanda in 1994. Now, as a Tutsi, Laurent Nkunda argued that he was in the Congo to track down and disarm those militias and to protect his own Tutsi minority from those people.
WERMAN: So here he is, Laurent Nkunda, rebel war hero one minute, and the next he's arrested by his one-time allies. What caused his fall?
GRESTE: Well, it is a little bit complicated. But it does seem that his fatal error was to launch an offensive on the east of the country, on the Congolese military late last year. In doing so, he pushed about 250,000 people from their homes and he brought down enormous amounts of international and diplomatic pressure not just on himself, but on both Rwanda, his allies in Rwanda, and on the Congolese government. It also seems as though he triggered a fairly important political shuffle in the cabinet in Kinshasa, the Congolese capital. What happened there was that the government – the President replaced both his Foreign Minister and his Defense Minister. And that seemed to open up a bit of diplomatic space that allowed both Rwanda and the Congo to change the nature of their relationship. And I think what happened was they both recognized that they would be better off without Laurent Nkunda.
WERMAN: And you mentioned that diplomatic space. I mean, the US and Britain are Rwanda's closest allies overseas. They provide most of Rwanda's foreign aid. They must have made quite clear that the conflict had to be brought to an end somehow.
GRESTE: That's right. They have been applying enormous amounts of diplomatic pressure over the past few months and over in the past few years, in particular, but I really think it had now got to the point where that pressure was unbearable and Laurent Nkunda had become an embarrassment than anything else to the Rwandans.
WERMAN: I suppose it's important for American listeners to understand that this doesn't really kind of solve the problems in Eastern Congo. Where does this leave Congo as a whole, and specifically Eastern Congo, the conflicts there?
GRESTE: No. Well, as you said, this war is definitely not over. The Eastern Congo is a myriad of armed groups, of militias. There's the [INDISCERNABLE], there's the Mai-Mai, there's the FDLR, there's the Congolese army which often behaves more like a militia than a disciplined military force. And these forces are all there – they're still there. They're still fighting and they're still operating and they're still battling to fill that power vacuum which General Nkunda has now vacated. And into this mix, of course, you've got the Rwandan troops themselves, who have moved in at the invitation of the Congolese to help take on the Hutu militias. So we still have an incredibly volatile and complicated situation. And added to that, there is enormous amounts of mineral wealth which is really keeping a lot of these militias alive and well resourced. So frankly, it is good news in one sense that the arrest of General Nkunda takes out effectively the most powerful military force in the region. But it doesn't resolve the conflict by any means whatsoever.
WERMAN: The BBC's East Africa correspondent Peter Greste, in Nairobi. Thanks very much.
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