SADC begins withdrawal of its peacekeeping forces from DR Congo

The Southern African Development Community (SADC) began on Tuesday the withdrawal of its peacekeeping forces from the eastern regions of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)through Rwanda.

Local media sources in Rwanda reported seeing SADC forces moving several trucks of soldiers and equipment from Goma in North Kivu province through Rwanda.

Reports indicate that the convoy will travel to Chato in north-western Tanzania before repatriation to various countries.

“Our orders say by May 30, everyone and everything needs to be out of Goma and on its way. It was chaos over the weekend, but nobody is complaining because we’re finally going home,” one soldier is reported as saying.

Rwanda had agreed in April to give safe passage to the SADC forces.

The force of several thousand peacekeeping troops from South Africa, Malawi and Tanzania had been sent to eastern Congo by the SADC in 2023 to help the Congolese government pacify a mineral-rich region plagued by various insurgencies.

The SADC military mission had suffered heavy losses in the previous months, with around a dozen soldiers from South Africa, Malawi, and Tanzania killed as the M23 rebels seized control of Goma.

Their termination came after losing about 17 soldiers to the rebels in the DRC.

The rebels have said they want to take their fight to the far-off capital, Kinshasa, while Congo’s president has called for a massive military mobilization to resist the rebellion.

The M23 rebels are supported by about 4,000 troops from neighboring Rwanda, according to U.N. experts, and at times have vowed to march as far as Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, over 1,000 miles away.

Rwanda has rejected charges, including by the Congolese government and U.N. experts, that it backs M23 in eastern Congo, a region that is now one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises with more than 7 million people displaced.

The withdrawal of SADC troops comes after the M23 took control of eastern Congo’s main city of Goma and seized the second largest city, Bukavu, in offensives over the past two months.

Fourteen South African soldiers, and at least three from Malawi, were killed in January in the fighting. The United Nations later evacuated a group of critically injured South Africans.