Having worked in the Great Lakes region for a few years, I had grown accustomed to times of immense hope as well as moments of tremendous disillusionment. Experiences of the latter though had never been as devastating as when I came across an apparently inconsequential piece of news while recently in Goma.
Upon arriving to conduct a humanitarian assessment mission, Goma was buzzing with astonishing news. After years of rebellion in North Kivu, CNDP General Laurent Nkunda had just been arrested by the Rwandan government. In exchange the Rwandan army (RDF) was invited back to the Congo on January 20th to conduct joint military operations against the Rwandan rebels of the FDLR. The moves were widely applauded as the military offensive was supposed to spark massive desertion and voluntary repatriation by the rebels who had been told for years that they had nothing to fear in Rwanda, much less to be fighting against.
Despite these shocking developments, I found myself much more astounded by the fate of another rebel General which was being discretely sealed those very same days. While interacting with former colleagues, I learned that a former FDLR commander I knew had been handed down a life sentence by a traditional court in Rwanda. Although absent from international press coverage, the conviction on genocide charges of former FDLR General Amani Amahoro, (Seraphin Bizimungu) constituted a resounding and contradictory message to the FDLR remaining in the Congo.
I first met Gen. Amani while I was conducting research on Rwandan refugees in 2005. He was the widely celebrated leader of an internal mutiny within the FDLR. Just five months prior, the FDLR’s political leadership surprisingly declared that they would unilaterally disarm and return en masse to Rwanda. While their previous demands included direct negotiations with their former enemies during the Rwanda civil war, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and internal political opening within Rwanda, the Rome Declaration required only the establishment of an international follow-up committee to monitor the return and reintegration of ex-combatants. When no progress was made towards creating such a mechanism, the FDLR leadership began backtracking and demanded the legalization of their own political party as a pre-condition for return.
In their place, Amani emerged with the support of the Congolese government, and promised to lead the return movement despite the lack of security guarantees. In a press conference, he accused the group’s leadership of sabotaging the historic opportunity to remove themselves from the military equation of the region. The pretext of the rebel threat is what permitted the Rwandan government to continue to wage a proxy war against the Congo according to him.
By all accounts, including the Rwandan government itself, Amani was not suspected of any participation in the genocide and was widely considered a political moderate. During an interview I had with him, he claimed that fighting non-violently for political opening from within Rwanda was the only path to truly sustainable peace for the region. Fully aware of the variety of interests behind the outcome of his mutiny, I came away nevertheless more hopeful about the prospects for regional peace as a result of this seemingly courageous figure.
After waiting in an ad hoc camp in the Ruzizi Plains for over three months though, few fellow combatants parted ranks with the traditional leadership of the FDLR. Nevertheless, in December Amani fulfilled his promise and returned to Rwanda with over 150 loyal soldiers, one of the largest groups of ex-combatants since the inception of the UN’s demobilization and repatriation program (DDRRR). While no follow-up committee had been established, Gen. Amani considered that in light of the media attention given to his group, the international community would naturally monitor his security and reintegration upon return.
Following his departure, Gen. Amani was rapidly transformed into the poster child of the UN’s sensitization efforts to promote future desertion amongst the FDLR. He was featured prominently in numerous pamphlets distributed to rebels throughout remote mountains and jungles as the quintessential example of how warmly Rwanda welcomed its brethren who chose to return home.
Although he was required to go through the same re-integration process as all other regular combatants, in March 2006, special provisions were supposedly made for his integration into the Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF). Rwandan authorities declared this as “a clear testament of the government's policy to give opportunity for all Rwandans to participate in nation building.”
Four months after his return, in an interview with the UN, Gen. Amani had a special message for the FDLR combatants still in the Congo. He told them:
Don’t be afraid, you can return. The security situation in Rwanda is good. There is nothing that can keep you abroad. Come home to your fatherland and join the efforts besides your Rwandan brothers to reconstruct your country.
So compelling was Amani’s message that when I began working with DDRRR, I frequently put FDLR combatants in touch with him directly by Satellite phone from isolated areas of the Congolese jungle. His personal testimony was often enough to put to rest their fears of reprisals and incarcerations in Rwanda which were widely shared amongst the young rebels. Amani always sounded quite eager to respond to these calls and he often reiterated to the FDLR that real political change could only be achieved from within Rwanda.
A young FDLR combatant speaking with Amani from South Kivu
In January 2007 though, I took part in a rare follow-up mission to the ex-combatant reintegration center in Rwanda and to my enormous surprise stumbled across Gen. Amani still living in a small house on the outskirts of the camp. Over a year after his widely acclaimed repatriation, Gen. Amani seemed strikingly timid, even ashamed of the fact that we had discovered he was still there. Nevertheless, he quickly explained that appointments into the RDF always take time, but that he would be assuming his command post shortly. Aware of the constraints in what he could share with us around Rwandan authorities, I invited Amani to a drink at a local hotel. His respectful decline led some of my colleagues to believe that he was under some form of house arrest.
Nevertheless, following a few more months confined to the reintegration camp, Amani was ultimately integrated into the RDF, but not in a command post as he had sought. In mid 2007, Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP rebellion was beginning to gain momentum and Amani was assigned to work in foreign intelligence to make use of his extensive knowledge of the Congo. Moreover, he apparently began studying at a private university in Kigali at night. Despite some blemishes, the UN’s success story still appeared salvageable.
When the Rwandan government started to consider ending the CNDP proxy rebellion, Amani’s utility apparently began to wane. Despite the fact that his admission into the intelligence branch of the RDF would have had required extensive background checks, “new” information lead to genocide charges being brought against him in late 2008. Instead of having his case taken before a certified judge with guarantees of due process and standards of proof of evidence, Amani was summoned before the traditional Gacaca courts conducted by village elders.
Although the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) has temporal limits, beginning on April 6, 1994, for genocide charges, the Rwandan government considers that the genocide actually began shortly after President Kagame’s RPF rebels invaded northern Rwanda in October of 1990. As a result, the charges against Amani stemmed from the deaths of three Tutsis in Nyagatare sector of northeastern Rwanda where he was deployed as a young Captain in 81st battalion of the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR) between 1993 and 1994.
After a swift initial conviction on December 18th, Amani was generously afforded an appeals hearing on January 15th. In his defense, Amani argued that the accusations were baseless and that the Tutsis in question were killed during a military campaign against individuals suspected of supporting the RPF. Major Rusigarira, the commander of the 81st battalion at the time, would have been the only one responsible for conducting such operations. The village elders called eleven individuals who could only confirm that Amani was a recognized military authority in the zone and that his soldiers executed his orders. Nevertheless, on January 22nd, two days after the Rwandan army began its joint military operations against the FDLR in the eastern Congo, the Gacaca elders, playing the role of judge and jury, denied Amani’s appeal and condemned him to life in prison.
Apparently unaware of the implications of this event, members of the international community appeared quite satisfied with the joint military operations against the FDLR. U.S. Ambassador William John Garvelink felt that the initiative was achieving “real success” and UN Under-Secretary General John Holmes claimed to be “optimistic". The government-sponsored Rwandan Times in Kigali claimed that,
FDLR leaders are increasingly running out of options because they cannot cope with the reality that our country had never had equality, justice, freedom, tolerance, peaceful co-existence and tremendous development that we have today. Those who have just seen the light are now returning from DR Congo jungles.
However, Amani’s conviction has proved significantly detrimental to the UN’s disarmament and repatriation efforts. Despite the fact the nearly 500 combatants sought out the DDRRR program to return to Rwanda during the joint operations, no officer dared to undertake on such a risk. Besides the ambush killing of Lt. Colonel Anaclet Hitimana (alias Kabuyoya Gasarasi) the RDF only managed to capture spokesman Lt. Col. Michel Habimana. In light of the operations’ dismal performance in promoting the desertion of FDLR officers, the Rwandan government quickly transformed Habimana’s “capture” into a “surrender.” The blatant spin appeared preposterous in light of Habimana’s previous life sentence in absentia by a Gacaca court and his recent statements that "there is no safety for us in Rwanda, it is a dictatorship".
A FDLR splinter group, referred to as the Rally for Unity and Democraty (RUD) was also clearly fearful of the implications of Amani’s sentence. They had voluntarily disarmed in May of 2008 and began dialoguing with the Congolese government regarding a potential repatriation to Rwanda. During a sensitization visit in November 2008 to RUD’s camp in North Kivu, the World Bank continued to point to the exemplary success of General Amani’s integration into Rwandan society as a clear illustration of the possibilities awaiting them upon return. However, few days following Amani’s original conviction in December, RUD released a press statement arguing that his life-sentence was “indicative of how the RPF treats the people who opt to return to Rwanda: as soon you are no longer of any RPF ‘propaganda value’, you became disposable in the eyes of Kagame's regime.”
After the UN organized a short “go-and-see” visit to Rwanda of a few of their officers in mid-January, the RUD returned to North Kivu and immediately disappeared into the forest over night. Denied access to speak with Gen. Amani, intimidated by Tutsi officials and still traumatized by the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Hutu refugees at the hands of the RPF between 1996 and 1998, the RUD preferred to abruptly end to their dialogue process rather than risk being forced to return by the joint operations.
In the absence of anything remotely similar to an international monitoring committee, the World Bank remains the only credible entity capable of ensuring that FDLR ex-combatants are not unjustly treated after they return to Rwanda. However, the Bank’s objectivity is severely compromised by its close ties and near complete funding of the Rwandan Demobilization and Reintegration Commission (RDRC). Without any repercussions, the RDRC recently sent hundreds of demobilized RDF troops to fight alongside Laurent Nkunda’s CNDP. In Amani’s case, both the UN and the bank were powerless to intervene into Rwanda’s judicial system.
The Gacaca courts are allegedly aimed to reconcile Rwandan society through dealing with all lesser cases of genocide charges not taken on by the ICTR or the regular judicial system. However, they have been widely criticized for their failure to uphold international human rights standards. Most recently, legal experts on the UN Human Rights Committee pointed out to the Rwandan government that the Gacaca courts were in clear violation of article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights concerning due process and the impartiality of judges. Fortunately for the Rwandan government though, they were able to rush Amani through the Gacaca process before the courts are to be disbanded at the end of June 2009.
Historically, the Rwandan government has sought to implicate the entirety of the FDLR in the genocide. In 2004, the International Crisis Group estimated that the number of genocidaires amongst the rebels was roughly ten percent, with the vast majority having been small children in 1994. However in 2008, the Rwandan government provided the Congolese government with a list of suspected FDLR genocidaires containing 6,974 names, coincidentally the common estimate for the total number of rebels.
Even the UN’s special representative, Alan Doss, was severely disheartened by the unproductive gesture and called on the Rwandan government to focus on those for whom international arrest warrants existed. In reality, the ICTR has indicted only two FDLR commanders, Idelphonse Nizeyimana and Aloys Ndimbati.
Thanks to this strategy of associating all political opposition with the genocide, the RPF’s Ugandan clique has managed to systematically tighten their stranglehold over power in Kigali. Not only did informal EU electoral observer reports suggest that they might have won as much as 98% of the vote in recent local elections, but even the U.S.’s legal expert on the UN Human Rights Committee stated that it is “virtually impossible to set up a political party in Rwanda".
Nevertheless, despite resounding support for peace processes with the ruthless rebel groups in the region like the LRA and the FNL, the mere notion of political dialogue between Rwanda and the FDLR remains utterly inconceivable. Recently captured Habimana noted this contradiction that while the international community supports hunting down and eradicating the FDLR, “when it came to the rebels in Uganda and Burundi, people were happy to talk about negotiation."This was even before the Congolese government decided to overlook an arrest warrant from the ICC for ex-CNDP Commander Bosco Ntaganda and put him out front in the operations against the FDLR.
When I learned of his sentencing, I went back to listen to Amani’s explanation for giving up the armed struggle, which ominously included a foreshadowing of his future. He said:
After 11 years, you have to make a choice, either retreat once again into the jungle, or go and win that political space inside [Rwanda]. The choice is clear, there are only two options. Carry out the political struggle within our country, with the eventual victims, with the risk of imprisonment and even disappearance, but conduct the political struggle inside [Rwanda] and not from the jungles of the Congo.
Spending the rest of his life within a prison cell was apparently less of a surprise for Amani than it was for me. Given the result of the recent operations, I imagine that other moderate FDLR leaders remaining in the Congo were not in the least bit shocked either. After all, even though the vast majority have no links to the genocide, they did not join Amani’s mutiny in 2005 for a reason.
