Democratic Republic of Congo braced for more conflict
Sultani Makenga strengthens his grip on the M23 rebel group and reinforces his position around Goma
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A UN official said: 'Makenga has been digging in, consolidating and going after new recruits. Everything feels very jittery right now.' Photograph: Isaac Kasamani/AFP
The Democratic Republic of Congo is braced for more conflict in its eastern provinces as the warlord, Sultani Makenga, strengthens his grip on the M23 rebel group and reinforces his position around Goma.
Local aid groups and UN officials said that while they welcomed the decision of a M23 faction leader, Bosco Ntaganda, to hand himself in to the US embassy in Rwanda last week and then to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to face war crimes charges, it would not make peace between the M23 and the DRC government more likely.
Ntaganda surrendered along with 700 of his followers because his faction had lost decisively to Makenga and he was thought to be in fear of his life. According to unconfirmed accounts, US intelligence facilitated his trip across Rwanda to the embassy in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, while the British and Dutch organised his flight from Rwanda to the Hague.
Since then, a UN official said: "Makenga has been digging in, consolidating and going after new recruits. Everything feels very jittery right now. It's an unstable moment."
The M23 took Goma, on the Rwandan border, last November but its leaders were persuaded by Rwanda and Uganda to withdraw on 1 December. The rebels still hold some of the high ground a couple of miles from Goma airport, close to the camps that house the more than 200,000 people displaced by November's offensive.
Peace talks between the M23 and the DRC government of Joseph Kabila are being held in Uganda and parallel contacts are said to be underway elsewhere in the region, but the distance between the two sides is substantial. Makenga is demanding the full reintegration of his force into the DRC army from which it mutinied last year, and a senior position for himself that would give him control of the mineral-rich North and South Kivu provinces.
The Kinshasa government is prepared to absorb Makenga's estimated 1,500 fighters, but will only accept M23 officers on a case-by-case basis depending on their human rights record, and says it will not will not accept Makenga.
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