Former Democratic Republic of Congo leader Joseph Kabila said he was starting a new rebel group that will fold in the M23 movement that now occupies part of the country’s east, posing a fresh challenge to President Felix Tshisekedi.
The move amounts to a serious threat to Tshisekedi and signals the collapse of last year’s peace agreement signed between Congo and Rwanda, which has backed the M23 rebellion. President Donald Trump had helped oversee negotiations for that deal and claimed that the agreement was one reason he deserved the Nobel Peace Prize.
The FRN will “unify and coordinate all resistance forces in order to put an end to tyranny by all means, including force,” the men said in a statement read by Claude Ibalanky, a businessman and former adviser to Tshisekedi, and sent to Bloomberg by message Monday. Kabila, who was sentenced to death in absentia last year after being convicted of treason, was flanked by M23 leaders as he announced his new Front pour la Refondation de la Nation in Goma on Monday.
He stepped down under international pressure, brokering a power-sharing deal with Tshisekedi after a disputed election that independent analysts say the current president almost certainly lost. M23 political leaders Corneille Nangaa and Bertrand Bisimwa as well as military head Sultani Makenga all signed the FRN statement Monday. The two men subsequently fell out. Spokespeople for Tshisekedi and Congo’s government did not immediately respond to messages requesting comment. All three men are also sanctioned by the US, as are M23 and Rwanda’s army.
Kabila served as Congo’s president from 2001 to 2019. When his father was assassinated in 2001, Kabila took over as president, guiding the country through peace talks and elections.
