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Congo and Rwanda signed a peace agreement by the United States on Friday to help end the deadly decades in eastern Congo while helping the United States government and US companies to access critical minerals in the region.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called him “important moment after 30 years of war”. Earlier, US President Donald Trump said at a press conference that he had been able to negotiate an agreement for “one of the worst wars that we have ever seen”.
“I was able to bring them together and sell it,” said Trump. “And not only that, we get a lot of mineral rights for the United States.”
The agreement was presented as an important step towards peace in the Central African Nation of Congo, where a conflict with more than 100 armed groups, the most powerful supported by Rwanda, has killed millions since the 1990s.
It is also at the heart of Trump’s push to access the critical minerals necessary for a large part of world technology at a time when the United States and China are actively in competition for influence in Africa.
Analysts consider the agreement as a major turning point, but do not believe that it will quickly end the fighting. The agreement implies provisions on territorial integrity and a ban on hostilities, as well as disengagement, disarmament and conditional integration of non -state armed groups.
The peace agreement that is unlikely to end the conflict
The rebel M23 group supported by Rwanda is the most important armed group in the conflict, and its major advance at the start of this year left bodies in the street.
With seven million people displaced in Congo, the United Nations described it as “one of the longest, complex and serious humanitarian crises on earth”.
The Congo hopes that the United States will provide him with the security support necessary to combat rebels and may make them withdraw from the key cities of Goma and Bukavu, as well as from the whole region, where Rwanda would have up to 4,000 soldiers. Rwanda said it defended its territorial interests and does not support M23.
The M23 rebels suggested that the agreement does not bind them. The rebel group was not directly involved in the planned peace agreement, although it is part of other current talks.
Corneille Nangaa, chief of the Congo River Alliance – known by his French acronym AFC – who includes M23, told the Associated Press in March that direct peace talks with the Congo can only be held if the country recognizes their grievances and that “all that concerns us that is done to us is against us”.
A spokesperson for M23, Oscar Balinda, also echoed these reflections in an interview with the AP this week, saying that the agreement facilitated by the United States does not concern rebels.
Rwanda has also been accused of having exploited minerals in eastern Congo, according to analysts on the trend, it is difficult to make Rwanda not to be involved in the region. Critical minerals are used in smartphones, advanced and much more fighter planes.
A team of UN experts allegedly allegedly allegedly in a report, “fraudulent extraction, trade and export to Rwanda [Congo] The minerals took advantage of both AFC / m23 and the Rwandan economy. “Rwanda has denied any involvement in the minerals of the Congo.
The agreement is also at the heart of the American government’s pressure to counter China in Africa. Chinese companies have been one of the main players in the Congo mineral sector for many years. The Chinese Cobalt refineries, which explain the majority of the world supply, depends strongly on the Congo.
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‘Proposal for trigger-happy’
Analysts say that American engagement could depend on the access to which he has minerals discussed in the context of separate negotiations between American and Congolese governments.
It is estimated that the most unexploited minerals are worth up to 24 billions of US dollars by the American trade department.
Christian Moleka, political scientist of the Congolese reflection, described the agreement as “major turning point” in the conflict of several decades, but said that the signature could “in no case eliminate all questions of the conflict”.
“The current Agreement project ignores war crimes and justice for the victims by imposing a partnership between the victim and the attacker,” he said. “It seems to be a proposal for triggering and cannot establish sustainable peace without justice or reparation.”
In the province of Congo in the north of Kivu, the hardest by fighting, some believe that the peace agreement will help resolve violence, but will warn that justice must always be rendered for lasting peace to settle.
“I do not think that Americans should trust 100%,” said Hope Muhinuka, militant from the province. “It is up to us to capitalize on everything we now have as an opportunity.”
The conflict can be attributed to the consequences of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where the Hutu militias killed between 500,000 and a million tutzhnics, as well as moderate Hutu and TWA, indigenous peoples. When the forces led by Tuts retaliated, nearly two million Hutus crossed the Congo, fearing reprisals.
The Rwandan authorities accused the Hutus who fled to participate in the genocide and allegedly alleged that elements of the Congolese army protected them. They argued that the militias formed by a small fraction of the Hutus are a threat to the Tutsi population of Rwanda.
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