The M23 soldiers have left the town for the Sabyinyo hills. According to the spokesperson for the Ugandan soldiers stationed in Bunagana, Some of the refugees who had gone to Uganda have returned to cultivate their fields. But the border post has not been reopened with this country by the Congolese authorities. Basic necessities are therefore smuggled.
“Bunagana is a city on the border, recalls Reagan Miviri, researcher at the Congo Studies Group and at the Ebuteli Congolese Research Institute in the DRC, at the microphone of Claire Fages. This means that there are bound to be interactions between Uganda and the DRC across this border, which nevertheless remains open. At the same time, we cannot say that there is normality. It remains an occupied area and the population still feels outside the normal structures of the Congolese administration”.
“It is the M23 which takes the administration of all these areas”
If the M23 soldiers are more discreet in Bunagana, they are still the ones who administer the area, underline a researcher and witnesses from civil society. Many displaced people have not returned. Ugandan, Kenyan and Sudanese soldiers had to disarm and confine the armed groups, including the M23. But the process did not go beyond that. The M23 demanded negotiations from the Congolese authorities, who always refused them.
Miviri deciphers: “We have seen over the months that a kind of relationship has been created where the Ugandans are on one side, the M23 on the other side. A precarious stability has been created. The Ugandans and the Kenyans play no administrative role, which means that in this area, regardless of the presence of these soldiers from the East African Community, it is the M23 which holds the administration of all these areas.”
The Congolese administration has not regained control of the area and the children are still not going to school.
In Kinshasa, we are now counting on a military intervention by the Southern African Community (SADC) to liberate this region of eastern Congo. In the meantime, the mandate of the EAC has been extended until the end of August 2023.
Gaston Rwaka
