PREVIEW
AU summit leaders show limited reaction to the fall of Kivu Sud’s largest city, despite rising concerns and calls for the rebel group to disarm
News of the fall of Bukavu, the largest city in Kivu Sud in eastern Congo-Kinshasa, over the weekend, while the region’s leaders gathered for the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, has been received with barely a murmur of protest.
In Addis, Peace and Security Commissioner Bankole Adeoye said the AU was ‘very, very concerned about an open regional war’, while leaders urged the M23 rebel group, which is sponsored by Rwanda, to disarm.
That is unlikely to deter M23 and Rwandan troops from entrenching their control over the Kivus (AC Vol 66 No 3, After seizing Goma, Kigali’s rebels head south & Vol 66 No 4, As Kinshasa fumes, Kigali plots its next move).
In the meantime, there have been reports of mass looting in Bukavu, with the UN World Food Programme reporting said a warehouse containing nearly 7,000 tonnes of food was looted.
A diplomatic push for international support, led by Congo-K’s Foreign Minister Thérèse Kayikwamba Wagner, appears to have borne little fruit.
The joint East African Community/Southern African Development Community summit in Dar es Salaam on 8 February tasked regional defence chiefs with meeting within five days to draw up ‘technical direction’ for a ceasefire and the passage of humanitarian assistance, as well as plans to secure and re-open roads between Goma and Bukavu, both of which have now been taken by M23 and Rwanda. But there are no immediate plans for the regional blocs to meet again before the 8 March deadline set by the February summit.
The decision by Angola’s President João Manuel Gonçalves Lourenço to step down from his role as mediator of peace talks between Congo-K and Rwanda, as he takes over the rotating chair of the African Union, is another blow for Congo-K, which loses one of its main allies.
The conflict is on the agenda at an EU foreign minister’s council on 24 February but is almost certain to be overshadowed by the bloc’s approach to potential peace talks between the United States and Russia aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.
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