NAIROBI, Kenya — Lootings. Assassinations. A spreading sense of lawlessness.
That was the alarming picture that emerged as M23 rebels began to pull out of Goma on Saturday, a city in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The violence came despite vows by the rebels to withdraw peacefully.
On Saturday afternoon, United Nations officials in Goma confirmed that the rebels were finally leaving. “It’s happening,” said Hiroute Guebre Sellassie, who heads the United Nations peacekeeping office in North Kivu Province. “By the close of business it should be done.”
Residents packed the streets to watch the rebels chug out of town in big trucks, with rebel soldiers belting out victory songs as they left.
“We saw combat and the enemy ran away!” the rebels cheered.
Another verse: “We’re leaving but we’ll be back soon!”
Still, many of Goma’s residents were frightened about what lies ahead. Lawlessness has been increasing in the last week with home invasions, carjackings and assassinations on the rise.
Residents in Goma reported on Friday that the rebels were piling cases of ammunition and other looted supplies onto trucks, with some of it heading toward neighboring Rwanda, while a new document sent to a United Nations Security Council committee said that the Rwandan Army had crossed the border into Congo and had helped the fighters capture Goma in the first place.
Rwandan troops “openly entered into Goma through one of the two official border crossings,” said the document, which was signed by Steve Hege on behalf of a United Nations investigative panel of which he is the coordinator, and was leaked by a third party.
The panel has accused Rwanda — with help from Uganda — of creating, equipping and commanding the rebels. In the document, the panel contended that once the rebels and Rwandan soldiers chased the Congolese Army out of Goma, “these troops together took control over the entire city, marching through downtown dressed in a combination of R.D.F. and new M23 uniforms,” using R.D.F. to signify the Rwanda Defense Force.
Rwanda has strenuously denied any covert involvement in this round of conflict. But it has sent thousands of soldiers across the border to overthrow the Congolese government at least twice in the past, justifying such actions by blaming Congo for insecurity across the region.
Some of Rwanda’s staunchest allies, including the United States, have recently cut aid to Rwanda amid the allegations of meddling in Congo. On Friday, the BBC reported that the British government had suspended more than $ 33 million in aid, which Rwanda desperately needs to keep its government running.
Congo and Rwanda seem to be heading into yet another turbulent, acrimonious phase, with tensions growing by the day. It began this spring when more than 1,000 former rebels who had been integrated into the Congolese Army mutinied. The rebels named themselves the M23 after March 23, 2009, the date of a failed peace deal between the two sides.
Most of the rebel commanders were Tutsi, the same minority ethnic group that dominates politics and the economy in Rwanda, and many of them had fought in the Rwandan Army.
The rebels indicated this week that they would abide by a regional agreement signed last weekend to leave Goma. “And we are continuing with that plan,” Bertrand Bisimwa, an M23 spokesman, said Friday.
He said the rebels planned to station all troops about 12 miles outside the city, as the agreement demanded.
Some residents reported an increase in carjackings and break-ins in recent days, saying that Goma was becoming virtually lawless at night. Many people fear that a vacuum could open up as the rebels leave, and that the Congolese Army could be even worse.
When Congolese troops hastily retreated from Goma last week, Mr. Nunn said, “there was a lot of rape, a lot of insecurity, a lot of extortion and some killings.”
“It was a mess, and people are worried about the same kind of thing happening when they come back,” he added.
The deal struck last weekend calls for one battalion of government troops to return to Goma’s streets and for a mixed force of rebels, government troops and a yet-to-be-named “neutral force” to guard the airport, from which millions of dollars in minerals is exported every month.
The rebels have clearly infiltrated the police in Goma, with officers who speak the principal Rwandan language strutting around the city last week in uniforms so freshly sewn that loose threads still hung off them. Congolese officers who had been disarmed said that only Tutsi officers were allowed to carry guns.
Most analysts said earlier that they believed that the rebels would withdraw from Goma after cleaning out everything of value (there were reports that they robbed the central bank this week). Because the Congolese government is so weak and its army is in such disarray, the rebels are expected to extract a new deal that will give them top positions in the army and an even firmer grip on a large and lucrative swath of eastern Congo.
Residents said that at least 10 people in Goma had been assassinated in the past 10 days, with many more disappearances. After one magistrate was struck in the face with a machete and nearly killed last week, United Nations peacekeepers evacuated more than 20 other magistrates.
“We’ve confirmed several cases of targeted killings by the M23 in and around Goma,” said Ms. Sawyer, the Human Rights Watch researcher. She said the victims included “those who refused to join the M23 or act as informants, individuals deemed uncooperative during looting incidents, and other suspected ‘enemies.’ ”
The rebels have denied any wrongdoing.
Mr. Bisimwa, the rebel spokesman, said that he had heard the same accusations but that no one had offered proof.
“Where are the facts?” he asked.
hem.
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