A few people have been asking me what the situation is like here in Rwanda, so here is a complete update of the situation to this day.
The country in itself is calm, most of it is classified as level 0 security by the UN, which means it is the safest it can get. The only part of the country that is in level 1 security is the west of the country, including the two land borders to DRC, the whole lakeshore of lake Kivu, and a small part of the border with Burundi.
This is for many reasons, polotical and natural. Let’s start with the natural ones. The region is a very seismic one and combined to large quantities of gas found in lake Kivu, this can potentialy lead to a serious natural disaster. Since I’ve arrived in the country I felt two earthquakes in Kigali, one soft and one pretty strong (it woke me up during the night). Just to give you an idea of the frequency.
The political reasons are all linked to the present situation in the DRC. Indeed, fighting has begun anew for a few months now on the other side of the border, mainly in the north Kivu region, in the area around Goma, a town on the border with Rwanda. Goma is considered a strategic point for military operations in the region and is therefor prone to attack, although fighting has never been reported closer than 20 km to it.
The fighting going on in the region isn’t a simple “official army vs. rebels” situation, and the history of conflicts between Rwanda and the DRC is a long one. There are at least four protagonists in the present conflict: the DRC army, the former Rwandan army that fled the country afer the genocide, the rebels under the command of Laurent Nkunda, and according to the DRC, the offical Rwandan army.
The whole situation is somewhat reminiscent of the 1994 genocide: both ethnic groups are represented in the former Hutu Rwandan army and the Tutsi rebels under Laurent Nkunda (or at least that’s what I’m told). Furthermore, those two groups are said to be supported by the DRC for the former Rwandan army and Rwanda for Laurent Nkunda’s troops.
Recently, the DRC government accused Rwanda of sending official troops into the north Kivu region and allieged they had captured some of its members. This of course does nothing to soften the relations between the two countries. International agencies are very concerned about the situation, but there has been no news for a few days now, or at least no new news if I can put it like that.
Sorry but no photos to go with this article, I haven’t been to the north west of Rwanda yet, and probably won’t in the near future… I hope this helped you understand the present situation, and I hope I didn’t get anything dramatically wrong!
