Rebels agree to a ceasefire with African coalition troops departing from eastern Congo
The M23 rebels in control of key areas of eastern Congo agreed Friday to a ceasefire with African coalition peacekeepers who have announced their withdrawal even as the conflict between the insurgents and Congo 's government continues.
The rebels and troops from the South African Development Community, or SADC, said in a joint news release that they would work together to rebuild the airport in the eastern hub of Goma, which was damaged when rebels took over, so that the SADC troops could depart the country in an orderly way.
The force of several thousand peacekeeping troops from South Africa, Malawi and Tanzania had been sent to eastern Congo by the SADC in 2023 to help the Congolese government pacify a mineral-rich region plagued by various insurgencies.
The troops failed to stop the lightning assaults starting in January by the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels that have claimed several key cities and that left several peacekeepers dead, eroding support for the mission in the donor countries. The SADC leadership announced their withdrawal earlier this month.
The rebels and SADC troops gave no timetable for the withdrawal under their accord.
The SADC troops "will be leaving via Goma airport, but it has to be repaired before they can leave,' M23 spokesman Lawrence Kanyuka said in an interview with The Associated Press.
Kanyuka called it a 'historic day," and said that the agreement with the SADC mission reflected an awareness that the conflict must be resolved politically not through fighting.
'We thank SADC today for understanding that there is no military solution to this conflict. They came today, and we talked about dialogue,' Kanyuka said, adding that their withdrawal was 'one of the prerequisites' for dialogue.
Kanyuka accused Congolese troops of violating ongoing ceasefire negotiations and said that M23 had requested that the SADC 'talk to Kinshasa to get them to stop and adhere to this ceasefire, which we have respected until now.'
.The SADC mission was part of a myriad of forces operating in the mineral-rich region plagued by decades of armed violence. They include Congolese government soldiers, foreign mercenaries, a United Nations peacekeeping force and more than 100 groups that are fighting for power, land and valuable mineral resources. Others try to defend their communities. Some armed groups have been accused of mass killings targeting ethnic groups
The M23 rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to U.N. experts, and at times have vowed to march as far as Congo's capital, Kinshasa, over 1,000 miles away.
Rwanda has rejected charges, including by the Congolese government and U.N experts, that it backs M23 in eastern Congo, a region that is now one of the world's largest humanitarian crises with more than 7 million people displaced.
The withdrawal of SADC troops comes after the M23 took control of eastern Congo's main city of Goma and seized the second largest city, Bukavu, in offensives over the past two months.
Fourteen South African soldiers, and at least three from Malawi were killed in January in the fighting. The United Nations later evacuated a group of critically injured South African
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