Rwanda threatens to withdraw its counterinsurgency troops from Mozambique

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Rwanda will withdraw its counterinsurgency troops from Mozambique if the mission’s foreign backers don’t maintain “sustainable funding,” the foreign minister said on Saturday.

Foreign Affairs Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said in a post on X that Rwandan troops were “being constantly questioned, vilified, criticized, blamed or sanctioned by the very countries that benefit from our intervention in Mozambique.”

Nduhungirehe said: “It’s not that “Rwanda could withdraw.”

“It’s that “Rwanda WILL withdraw” its troops from Mozambique, if sustainable funding is not secured for its counter-terrorism operations in Cabo Delgado,” he said, referring to a northern province of Mozambique.

Last week, the U.S. State Department imposed visa restrictions on “several senior Rwandan officials for fueling instability” in eastern Congo, intensifying pressure on the East African country after sanctions that targeted Rwanda’s military.

The unnamed Rwandan officials allegedly support Congo’s M23 rebel group, which the U.S. government says persists despite a U.S.-mediated peace agreement signed in December between the governments of Rwanda and Congo.

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Eastern Congo’s M23 rebellion has caused the death or displacement of thousands of people. Congo, the U.S. and U.N. experts accuse Rwanda of backing M23, which has grown from hundreds of members in 2021 to around 6,500 fighters, according to the U.N.

M23 emerged in 2012 as a Tutsi-led rebel group whose members said that a 2009 agreement signed to look after their interests — including integration into the army and the return of refugees from elsewhere in East Africa — had been violated by Congo’s government.

Rwandan President Paul Kagame has described M23’s struggle as justified in defense of the rights of Congolese Tutsis, who have sought shelter in neighboring countries over the years.

Rwandan authorities have criticized what they feel is injustice over U.S. sanctions. They say Congo hasn’t been targeted for its own alleged violations of the agreement.

The sanctions marked an ongoing change in U.S. government policy toward Rwanda, which for years had avoided international censure for its alleged military involvement in the territory of its much larger neighbor.

In Mozambique, however, Rwandan troops are helping to deter a jihadi insurgency launched in 2017 in Cabo Delgado.

The insurgent group, known as Islamic State-Mozambique, gained notoriety when it launched a 12-day attack on the coastal town of Palma in 2021, killing dozens of security officers, local civilians and foreign workers — and forcing French energy company TotalEnergies to halt a $20 billion offshore liquified natural gas project nearby.

That project is key to Mozambique’s development — one reason authorities there welcomed the deployment of Rwandan peacekeepers in July 2021.

Nduhungirehe complained that Rwandan troops were being condemned, despite their “ultimate sacrifice to stabilize this region” and allow internally displaced people to go back home.

In a separate post on X, government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo said the cost of deploying to Mozambique is at least 10 times more than the roughly 20 million euros (nearly $23 million) disbursed by the European Peace Facility. Makolo was responding to a Bloomberg report that European Union funding for Rwandan deployment in Mozambique will expire in May.

If Rwanda’s military authorities “assess that the work being done by Rwandan Security Forces in Cabo Delgado is not appreciated, they would be right to urge the government to end this bilateral counter-terrorism arrangement and pull out,” Makolo said.