Southern African leaders hold crisis talks on DR Congo conflict

The southern African grouping SADC held crisis talks Friday on the escalating conflict in the eastern DR Congo, with calls for a collective response to the threat to regional security.

The extraordinary summit was called after the Rwanda-backed M23 group captured most of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo this week in fighting that killed 16 soldiers from South Africa and Malawi deployed as part of regional peacekeeping efforts.

The two countries as well as the DRC are members of the 16-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC).

"The peace and security of our region is a shared obligation," Zimbabwe President Emmerson Mnangagwa, the current SADC chairman, said in opening remarks.

"To this end, our region stands ready to intensify efforts to protect SADC citizens from all forms of instability in line with the SADC Mutual Defence Pact," he said before the leaders went into closed-door talks.

The pact states that an armed attack on one SADC member would be considered a threat to regional peace and security and "shall be met with immediate collective action".

The alliance needs to "re-evaluate our collective response towards the restoration of peace and security in the DRC," executive secretary Elias Magosi said at the start of the meeting.

"It is a situation that requires urgent intervention and our collective efforts to restore normalcy and ensure the security of the SADC mission" as well as the DRC armed forces and civilians in the area, he said.

Among the leaders present in Harare was South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is under pressure at home after 13 South African soldiers were killed in the conflict in the past week, the highest toll since his country joined the SADC peacekeeping force deployed to the eastern DRC in 2023.

Three Malawi soldiers were also killed. Tanzania also has troops in the force, known as SAMIDRC, but as the regional heavyweight, South Africa makes up the bulk of the contingent.

Officials would not say how many troops were part of the SADC mission but a military expert in South Africa said there are about 1,300 soldiers in the force.

Absent from the meeting was Angola President Joao Lourenco, the African Union-appointed mediator in the conflict, who on Friday again urged Rwanda and the DRC to return to negotiations with a view to a summit in Luanda "as a matter of urgency".

Lourenco had called the countries' leaders to a summit in mid-December but Rwanda's President Paul Kagame would not attend after his DRC counterpart refused to agree to talks with the M23 group.

Kagame attended a summit Wednesday by the East African Community, which is also pursuing mediation efforts, though Tshisekedi was absent.

Rwanda has never admitted to military involvement in support of the M23 group but alleges that the DRC supports and shelters the FDLR, an armed group created by former Hutu leaders who massacred Tutsis during the 1994 Rwandan genocide.

Kagame charged this week that the SADC deployment in the DRC was "not a peacekeeping force, and it has no place in this situation".

It is a "belligerent force" engaging in combat operations to help the DRC government and working alongside groups like the FDLR, "which target Rwanda", he said.