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Congo Rebels Enter Provincial Capital, Reports Say Congo Rebels Enter Provincial Capital
(about 3 hours later)
KAMPALA, Uganda — Rebels from the Democratic Republic of Congo were reported to have entered the eastern city of Goma, a provincial capital and one of Congo’s largest cities, on Tuesday, and a senior United Nations official said the insurgents were “well inside.” NAIROBI, Kenya — Rebel fighters seized one of the biggest, most vital cities in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, setting off riots in several places across the country and raising serious questions about the stability of Congo as a whole.
A journalist traveling with the insurgents and residents said the rebels had marched down Goma’s main avenue without firing a shot as government forces melted away. Earlier, heavy shelling and gunfire had swirled around the airport and outer neighborhoods of the city before the insurgents, members of what is known as the March 23 Movement, or M23, took over. The rebel forces took Goma, a vibrant commercial hub on Congo’s eastern flank, with little resistance from the national army, which simply fled, and from United Nations peacekeepers who were reported to have just sat in their armored personnel carriers and watched. As the news began to filter across the country, protesters in Kinshasa, the capital, and Kisangani, another major city, poured into the streets, burning buildings, furious that their government was so weak.
The apparent takeover by the group, which has captured villages and beaten back a seemingly broken Congolese Army, could destabilize parts of central and east Africa, analysts said. United Nations peacekeepers have a mandate to use force to protect civilians, but it was unclear how peacekeepers garrisoned at the Goma airport reacted to the rebel advance after a rebel column from the north joined up with insurgents surrounding the city. “The M23 is well inside Goma,” said the senior United Nations military official in Goma, speaking in exchange for anonymity because the situation was so fluid. In many ways, it was history repeating itself in a country with one of the most haunted, blood-soaked histories in Africa. The trouble goes back more than a century, to when the Belgians waded into this lush expanse in the heart of Africa and brutalized the population in order to extract as much rubber and ivory as possible. In the mid-1990s, rebel forces and several foreign African armies swept through Congo, overthrowing the government and snatching enormous tracts of territory rich in copper, timber, diamonds and gold.
It was not immediately clear whether any of the peacekeepers tried to use force to hold off the rebel troops. The United Nations mission in Congo is the largest and most expensive of its kind in the world. Millions of people died in the ensuing chaos, and back then, just like now, the trouble started in the east.
By midday, the rebels had taken control of the area surrounding the airport but not the terminal and other buildings themselves. Government forces were reported to have fled, and by early afternoon Goma was again quiet — but now in different hands. The rebel group that now controls Goma, called the M23, is relatively small, with just a few thousand fighters who United Nations investigators say have received clandestine support from neighboring Rwanda. Still, Goma is symbolic and its loss could set off a chain reaction.
A store owner in Goma said the M23 rebels had released a statement over the radio Tuesday saying, “The airport has just fallen, and the city.” “The fall of Goma has always been a lodestar,” said Willet Weeks, a political analyst in Nairobi who has been following Congo since the 1970s. “Whether the government can regain any stability in the next few days will be the question.”
As the rebel troops marched down Goma’s main street, some crowds applauded. Congo’s government has been sent into a tailspin and many analysts believe chances are increasing for a military uprising along the lines of what happened in Mali this year when disaffected officers seized power, citing the government’s fecklessness against rebels. Or maybe other important areas of Congo, like copper-rich Lubumbashi, will rise up, which could cause Congo to fragment, fulfilling all the grim prophecies circulating for years that Congo is simply too vast and too complicated to be one country.
A German journalist traveling with a column of rebels who entered Goma said the insurgents had fanned out across the city center “without a shot” and had advanced toward the border between Rwanda and Congo. Many Congolese are fed up with the president, Joseph Kabila, who is seen by critics as disengaged, indecisive and incompetent, unable to muster a functioning army or breathe life into any national institutions. The dissatisfaction burst into the open last November, during Mr. Kabila’s re-election campaign, when opposition supporters took to the streets and Mr. Kabila’s troops opened fire on them.
At the border, witnesses said, Congolese customs officials walked away from their posts and congregated at a nearby hotel. On Tuesday, Congolese officials sought to blame Goma’s fall on Rwanda, which has meddled in Congo many times before and occupied large parts of the country from the mid-1990s through the early 2000s. Rwanda is one of the geographically smallest countries in Africa and Congo one of the biggest — though the Rwandans field one of the toughest, most disciplined militaries on the continent and the Congolese army is considered ineffectual.
Rwanda has been accused of backing the M23 rebels, and the border remained open Tuesday. “We consider Congo as a county that is under foreign occupation,” government spokesman Lambert Mende declared Tuesday.
In Goma, a British journalist said United Nations jeeps and armored personnel carriers had driven past rebel troops “like they ignored each other.” He said the president was calling on the people to “ resist by any means.”
The position of government forces remained unclear. But Goma was relatively quiet on Tuesday, despite the change in power. It is a border town, with a few hundred yards separating chaotic, messy, corrupt Congo on one side and tidy, orderly, stable Rwanda on the other. Many people in Goma speak Kinyarwanda, the language of Rwanda, and feel more connected to Kigali, Rwanda’s capital, than Kinshasa, the Congolese capital nearly 1,000 miles away.
“We are fighting still hard,” said a Congolese military spokesman, Col. Olivier Hamuli. Witnesses said that as the rebel commanders paraded down Goma’s pot-holed thoroughfares on Tuesday afternoon, some people clapped. Congolese customs officials quietly deserted their posts and congregated at a nearby hotel, leaving the border wide open.
It also remained unclear whether the mayor’s and governor’s residences and offices had been taken over. “The M23 is well inside Goma,” said a senior United Nations military official in Goma on Tuesday afternoon, requesting anonymity because the situation was so fluid.
On Monday, the Congolese government rejected an ultimatum made by rebels Sunday night to withdraw from Goma and accused Rwanda of sending two battalions of troops over the border into Congo to fight on their behalf and firing a rocket that injured five civilians in Goma. Congo is home to one of the largest, most expensive peacekeeping operations in the world, with more than 1,000 blue-helmeted troops in the Goma area. But they did not confront the rebels on Tuesday.
Rwanda has called the accusations “absolutely false and diversionary” and said it was “exercising restraint as of now,” according to a military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Joseph Nzabamwita. Rwanda’s military accused the Congolese Army of bombing the nearby Rwandan border city of Gisenyi, killing one person and injuring two others. Instead, white United Nations jeeps and armored personnel carriers drove right past the occupying rebel troops “like they ignored each other,” one witness said.
“It’s really scary,” one radio journalist said, as fighting between government forces and rebel soldiers around Goma city broke out Monday afternoon. “We knew it would happen, but we didn’t think it would happen all of a sudden.” United Nations officials defended their actions, saying that fighting the rebels inside Goma could imperil the million or so people living in the city and that protecting civilians was the peacekeepers’ mandate.
Witnesses in Goma said heavy explosions pounded central Goma on Monday and a general panic by residents resulted in a mass exodus of civilians from the city center. Tariq Riebl, a humanitarian officer for the organization Oxfam in Goma, said that there had been reports of “fighting, looting, complete panic” across parts of Goma by Monday evening and that it was unclear whether rebels had come to control certain areas of the city. By midday Tuesday, the rebels had taken control of the area surrounding the airport but not the terminal and other buildings themselves.
Scores were believed to be injured in fighting Monday, and several killed, but there was no clear tally of casualties. Many people inside Goma seemed confused about the situation and how it would evolve in the days ahead.
A rebel offer to withdraw from Goma in exchange for concessions from the government did little to bring the two sides together. “To allow a peaceful exit,” a rebel news release circulated Monday morning said, “our movement demands” the “complete demilitarization of the city and the airport of Goma,” except for United Nations peacekeepers, and also “direct political negotiations with the Movement of March 23.” Just a few days ago, the rebels insisted they had no intention of taking Goma and were fighting the government simply in the hopes of getting a better deal to be integrated into the national army. Many diplomats and others have always suspected, though, that the rebels’ true aim was to carve out a sphere of influence within eastern Congo that would allow them to control the lucrative mineral trade and to stay close to Rwandan business and military contacts.
But Congo’s government rejected the ultimatum, and turned attention toward Rwanda. “We are resisting an aggression that Rwanda is launching against us,” said a Congolese government spokesman, Lambert Mende. “We have not yet declared war, but we are ready to face it. This is our country, our duty.” Rwanda has consistently denied backing the M23 rebels, though some United Nations officials say there is evidence that rebel fighters were recruited inside Rwanda and that the Rwandan government helped funnel weapons. In 2008, when another rebel group marched perilously close to Goma — and the M23 is essentially the recent incarnation of that group, with the vast majority of its troops and commanders the same — Rwandan tanks fired from across the border. At the time, the Congolese army fled, just like it did on Tuesday. The only thing that kept Goma from falling then was extensive negotiations and Rwandan pressure on the rebels to stop, which they did.
The United Nations expressed bewilderment and frustration at the rebel attack. Mr. Kabila is supposed to meet President Paul Kagame of Rwanda for peace talks in the coming days.
“They were able to bypass all of the positions we had,” said Hiroute Guebre-Selassie, who leads the United Nations peacekeeping office in North Kivu Province, where Goma is situated. “We are not facing a conventional force.” The rebels are now threatening to march to Bukavu, the next largest eastern Congo town and a gateway to the interior of the country.
Ms. Guebre-Selassie said that while United Nations soldiers had prepared for certain attacks, rebels were filtering “beyond sight” through a national park and “coming from other sides.”

Jeffrey Gettleman reported from Nairobi, Kenya, and Josh Kron from Kampala, Uganda.

The sequence of events for people in Goma is strikingly similar to the events of four years ago when many of the same rebel soldiers, under a different name, also captured large swaths of territory. This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
“The presumption by most of us was that there wouldn’t be this type of fighting in Goma, but that there would be a resolution,” said Mr. Riebl, of Oxfam. “It is probably worse than people expected.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 20, 2012Correction: November 20, 2012

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the United Nations official who leads the peacekeeping office in North Kivu Province. She is Hiroute Guebre-Selassie, not Guebre-Sellasie.

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the United Nations official who leads the peacekeeping office in North Kivu Province. She is Hiroute Guebre-Selassie, not Guebre-Sellasie.