Congo rebels' support network 'spans 25 countries'

One of Africa’s most brutal rebel movements relies on a vast international network of supporters in at least 25 countries including in United States and Europe, a United Nations report said.

The findings, to be discussed by the UN Security Council, show that the network of people help rebels in Congo buy arms and transfer money.

The conclusions are an indictment of how little the international community has done to cut off logistical support to the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda, known by its French acronym FDLR, an ethnic Hutu militia which has wreaked havoc in Congo.

The report, which was not made public but was made available to The Associated Press, reveals that supporters in North America, Europe and Africa have become the backbone of the group’s day-to-day operations, including in formulating its military strategy.

The Congolese army has also been funnelling weapons and ammunition to the rebel militia in defiance of UN sanctions and its own interests of eradicating the group, according to the report, a claim Congolese army officials denied.

“There is no army officer or soldier who’s helping and arming rebels,” said Col Delphin Kahimbi. “I don’t understand how you can help the same people we are fighting.”

The report also says the military operation mounted earlier this year against rebel group has largely failed. Although the militia was initially dislodged from strategic positions, it has since regained much of the lost territory and launched reprisal attacks against civilians.

The security council met in a closed-door session yesterday for a briefing by its sanctions committee on Congo, but members did not take up the report, said UN associate spokesman Farhan Haq.

They are likely to discuss it on Monday, he said, but an official involved in the debate said council members were trying to table the discussion because the findings included evidence of material support to the rebel group by member states.

The report says the rebel group continues to control lucrative gold mines in eastern Congo, allowing it to traffic millions of dollars in minerals through the country’s porous borders.

The FDLR is a rebel group made-up of Hutu refugees from Rwanda who took cover in neighbouring Congo after the end of Rwanda’s 1994 genocide of half a million Tutsis. Many of the FDLR’s founders and several of their current leaders are accused of having led the genocide.

UN investigators analysed telephone logs of senior militia commanders, showing regular contact with individuals, charity groups and government officials in at least 25 countries, mostly in Europe but also in the United States.

While previous reports have indicated that the Hutu militia’s main source of funding is its control of Congo’s mineral riches, the UN report argues that the FDLR’s international network living abroad is a critical source of support.

The UN found evidence that the group’s Germany-based president Ignace Murwanashyaka was helping to negotiate arms shipments as well as organising Western Union money transfers to commanders in the field.

The report says he was also managing large sums of money raised through the illicit sale of natural resources in areas under the control of the FDLR and wired to Germany from a minerals trading house in the Congolese town of Bukavu.

The chairman of the rebel army, arrested in Germany earlier this month, had been on a UN sanctions list for his rebel activities. Despite the sanctions, investigators found that Murwanashyaka, 46, continued to funnel money to his colleagues through other Hutu refugees in Germany.

The logs show that before his arrest, Murwanashyaka had made more than 240 calls to satellite phones used by FDLR field commanders, including numerous calls to the telephone of General Sylvestre Muducumura, the rebel movement’s army chief in eastern Congo.

FDLR deserters told the UN investigators that Muducumura did not carry out any major military operation without first consulting Murwanashyaka.

In one particularly horrific attack in May, the villagers of Busurungi were attacked by FDLR rebels. Women were gang-raped by soldiers and then hacked to pieces with machetes, according to US-based Human Rights Watch.

The phone logs show that just before and just after the massacre, there was a flurry of calls between phones used by top FDLR cadres, including 14 calls to Murwanashyaka’s numbers in Germany. He received a text message on May 11 from Muducumura’s number coinciding with the end of the massacre.

Besides Germany, the telephone logs indicated that the most frequent contact between the satellite phones used by top FDLR commanders was with five other countries, including Belgium and France.