Bosco Ntaganda: No Coming Back

On one cold Parisian night, in the mid 1660s, the great French mathematician and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal jotted down a thought which, unwittingly done or not, would come to summarise well the principle infirmity bedeviling today’s International Criminal Court (ICC): “Justice without force is powerless”. Placed in a seemingly eternal form of international limbo, by attempting to  operate within a horizontal world order with no ‘global executive’, the ICC’s plight to successfully detain and place on trial the world’s most notorious international criminals has been faltering at best. In the eleven years since the 60 state ratification of the 2002 Rome Statue and subsequent creation of the ICC, only one individual, Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, has been found guilty and sentenced for war crimes, with another five individuals currently facing similar proceedings. However, last Monday on March the 18^th, an unexpected and highly surprising series of events saw one of the international community’s most notorious war criminals, General Bosco Ntaganda, unprecedentedly ‘hand himself in’ to authorities at a US embassy in Kigali, Rwanda, in response to two ICC arrest warrants issued in 2006 and again in 2012. Ntaganda’s supposedly voluntary decision, though a brilliant stroke of fortune for the ICC, have left many perplexed as to why the highly sadistic defected ex-Congolese commander, charged with seven counts of war crimes and three of crimes against humanity by the ICC, chose to end seven years on the run in such a bizarrely peaceful and cooperative manner.

The  first potential reason for why the Rwandan born commander of the notorious Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) rebel group ‘M23’ decided to swap the DRC battlefields for neighbouring Rwanda’s American embassy may have been due to a genuine concern for his own personal safety. Since gaining notoriety for conscripting child soldiers, massacring local Congolese communities and using rape as a weapon of war during the early 21^st century rebel conflicts in the eastern DRC, the man African media branded ‘The Terminator’ has had numerous authorities from both inside and out of the continent attempt to capture him peacefully or otherwise. Though able to avoid detainment and even succeeding in gaining a legitimate high ranking position within the DRC’s army, via a Congolese peace settlement in 2009, Ntaganda’s decision to defect in 2012, co-create the rebel group M23 and seize the eastern DRC city of Goma saw him excluded from a second peace deal conducted last February. Whether purposefully done or not the sizeable omission of the rebel group’s co-founder by the Congolese government arguably fractured Ntaganda’s already faction-ridden mercenary outfit into an all-out state of nature. The ominous sight of hundreds of ex-M23 soldiers fleeing into the neighbouring country of Rwanda or alternatively surrendering to UN peacekeeping forces last weekend (16^th & 17^th of March), not to mention the detainment also of former M23 president bishop Jean-Marie Runiga by Rwandan law enforcers, suggests ex-general Ntaganda may have feared a particularly bloody end to his command post either at the hands of a mutinous M23 faction or from incensed former DRC comrades.

Another potential cause for Ntaganda’s unprecedented arrival at the Rwandan US embassy, interestingly dressed in disguise, may be linked to a deal brokered between the former general and the ICC itself. Aware of the political meltdown occurring within the M23 rebel group and knowing the limited number of available options open to Ntaganda, it is not beyond the realms of impossibility that a mutually beneficial agreement was struck between the two parties; with Ntaganda swapping a voluntary end to seven years evading state authorities for a potentially reduced sentence when tried at the Hague. What makes this proposal seem dubious however is firstly the unlikelihood of there being a secure channel of communication between Ntaganda and ICC officials during the M23 mutiny and secondly the decision by the former commander to turn himself over to officials at a US embassy in Rwanda, with neither Rwanda nor the USA officially recognising the ICC as a legitimate judicial body. If the decision to go to the US embassy in Rwanda was organised by Ntaganda, in accordance with advice from the ICC, the move was an incredibly risky one due to the strong possibility of the US rejecting Ntaganda’s claim for protection, irrespective of an international outcry due to the UN’s reinvigorated efforts to end the conflict within the DRC.

What seems to be the most plausible cause for Ntaganda’s surprise arrival at the US embassy on March the 18^th is an irrevocable shift by Rwandan government ‘bigwigs’ concerning the usefulness of the ex-M23 rebel commander in securing Rwandan interests in the neighbouring DRC. Though vehemently denied by Rwandan officials, the UN has strong reason to believe that Rwanda has been secretly backing Ntaganda’s M23 rebel rebellion since its inception. Aside from information gleaned from M23 members, there are a number of ties which had, until recently, bound together the Rwandan born former Congolese general with the Rwandan government and in particular Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame. President Kagame and ex-general Ntaganda certainly share a highly colourful joint past. Both originating from the minority Tutsi ethnic group, the pair were initially brought together serving in the Kagame lead Rwandan Patriotic Front, which invaded Rwanda in 1990 and subsequently fought in the Rwandan civil upheavals culminating in the horrific Hutu-conducted genocide of Tutsi minorities in 1994. Post-1994 Ntaganda enlisted and fought for various rebel groups within the eastern DRC in an attempt to oust deserting Hutu military groups who had fled from Kagame controlled Rwanda. By 2013, following in the wake of intensified international pressure for peace in the DRC and the breakup of the M23 rebel group, Ntaganda’s influence and position as a military commander seemed all but at an end. With no possibility of giving refuge to such a publically blacklisted and wanted international criminal and seeing no particular benefit in continuing to support him, it is very possible that Rwandan officials decided, if not even suggested, that the time was right for Ntaganda to disappear from central Africa.

With the recent announcement that President Kagame openly supports the transportation of former general Ntaganda to the Netherlands for trial and his decision not to block the arrival of ICC officials into Rwanda, it seems whatever link there may have been between the two men is well and truly severed. What shall be interesting though, is to hear Ntaganda’s account of any relations he or the rebel outfit M23 had with the state of Rwanda, if indeed there were any to begin with.